In this extraordinary crisis of affairs, no man can be a true patriot without first becoming an abolitionist. (A freesoiler is only a tadpole in an advanced state of transformation; an abolitionist is the full and perfectly developed frog.) And here, perhaps, we may be pardoned for the digression necessary to show the exact definition of the terms _abolish_, _abolition_ and _abolitionist_. We have looked in vain for an explanation of the signification of these words in any Southern publication; for no dictionary has ever yet been published in the South, nor is there the least probability that one ever will be published within her borders, until slavery is _abolished_; but, thanks to Heaven, a portion of this continent is what our Revolutionary Fathers and the Fathers of the Constitution fought and labored and prayed to make it--a land of freedom, of power, of progress, of prosperity, of intelligence, of religion, of literature, of commerce, of science, of arts, of agriculture, of manufactures, of ingenuity, of enterprise, of wealth, of renown, of goodness, and of grandeur. From that glorious part of our confederacy--from the North, whence, on account of slavery in the South, we are under the humiliating necessity of procuring almost everything that is useful or ornamental, from primers to Bibles, from wafers to printing-presses, from ladles to locomotives, and from portfolios to portraits and pianos--comes to us a huge volume bearing the honored name of Webster--Noah Webster, who, after thirty-five years of unremitting toil, completed a work which is, we believe, throughout Great Britain and the United States, justly regarded as the standard vocabulary of the English language--and in it the terms _abolish_, _abolition_, and _abolitionist_, are defined as follows:-- "Abolish, _v. t._ To make void; to annul; to abrogate; applied chiefly and appropriately to establish laws, contracts, rites, customs and institutions; as to _abolish_ laws by a repeal, actual or virtual. To destroy or put an end to; as to _abolish_ idols." "Abolition, _n._ The act of abolishing; or the state of being abolished; an annulling; abrogation; utter destruction; as the _abolition_ of laws, decrees, or ordinances, rites, customs, &c. The putting an end to slavery; emancipation." "Abolitionist, _n._ A person who favors abolition, or the immediate emancipation of slaves."