The unfortunates are kidnapped, then with ghoulish ceremony and weird incantations they are frightfully mutilated; while life still remains a demoniacal feast is held and human flesh consumed to offset the "Ju-Ju" or spell of evil omen. Then the victim is put out of his misery and buried so that the white man shall know nothing of the mysteries ages old, which the tribes of Africa revere; many of the victims are young women and girls, captured by members of secret societies and taken to some remote spot in the bush. Whatever of eminence any individual of the race has attained, is due directly or indirectly to the civilizing influence of the institution of slavery. It was the master of slaves who accomplished the greatest missionary success and the progress of his ward since is due to the training and influence of the past. Foreign people have said that if the Confederate Government had freed the slaves, it might have been recognized by European nations. Such persons should recall that when Don Quixote freed the galley slaves he had then to defend himself against them--they would see the absurdity of such an idea. What could the people of the South have done in the prosecution of the war if 3,000,000 slaves had been turned loose among them and the whole labor system of the country deranged? Our victors say that having submitted "to the arbitrament of arms," and having been overcome, the question of right has been decided against us, and that we are a conquered people who must submit to the fate of the conquered; but though the gordian knot was cut with the sword, constitutional questions cannot be solved in the same way, such a view would but prove the wrong of the whole doctrine of coercion. The Constitution created by sovereign states, whatever the powers delegated, could never have contemplated the possibility of one of those states being reduced to the condition of a conquered province. That Constitution was as binding in those states, which remained after the secession of the Southern states as before, and it was as much an outrage to make war upon those latter for the act of secession, as it would have been to have destroyed their existence as states while they remained in the Union. It is true that the South claimed to be a sovereign independent people after their withdrawal, and were so by every principle of right and justice, but that position did not authorize the making of war against them. A counter-claim was that the seceding states had no right to withdraw, and therefore those arrayed in opposition undertook to compel them to submission to the rule and laws of the Union: upon that ground alone could they justify the war. They were the aggressors and disregarded the Constitution and the Union and they also were the ones who violated the principle and precept of that Constitution, which they were sworn to support and defend.