I. Civil War. the Union. ART. V. State of the Country. - Influence upon it, of the Idea of the Restoration of II. The long and terrible reign of Parties. of the Nation on the scene of Affairs. Majestic Reappearance Great Truths accepted, III. Duty of the Nation to loyal citizens in the Seceded States. Their subjection to a Reign of Terror. Alleged unanimity in the Seceded States. IV. The Seceded States may return to the Union or the Secession Party may maintain their Revolt by Arms. The War one of Self-Preservation on the part of the Nation. Not aggressive and against the South but defensive and against Secessionists. Supposing the Triumph of the Secessionists; insuperable difficulties. Every benefit contemplated by Secession, defeated by the War into which it plunged. Restoration to the Union the true Result. V. Miscalculations of Secession. Miscarriage, as to a "United South." And as to a "Divided North." And as to the temper, and purpose of the Nation. And as to Expansion, the Slave Trade, Free Trade, Boundless Prosperity, Cotton Monopoly. Secession a frightful and incalculable Mistake. VI. The Border Slave States. State of Parties in 1860. Sudden and secret Revolution in Virginia. Probable effects, political and military. Western Virginia. Central mountain Route, to the central South, Delaware, Maryland, Missouri. The Original States the States carved out of them the Purchased States. Kentucky, her position, peril, temper, purpose. VII. General Conclusion. I. Civil War. Influence upon it, of the Idea of the Restoration of the Union. The American people are in the midst of civil war. That calamity which, in the just and almost universal judgment of mankind, is the direst which can befall nations, has already covered our country with its terrible shadow; and the gloom thickens from day to day, portending a conflict as frightful as it is repulsive whose issues are, in many respects, hardly less uncertain than they may be vast. Hundreds of thousands of armed men are hastening to slay each other-led by captains many of whom are worthy to command heroes, and provided with every means of mutual destruction which the science and skill of the age can devise. Hundreds of millions of dollars have already been expended in these immense and fatal preparations: and so thoroughly is the most warlike of all races aroused, and so completely are the exigencies of the times held to demand of every man a complete readiness to defend all that he is not willing to surrender, that, at whatever cost, every one capable of bearing arms will be armed, and will use his arms with deadly effect, according as the course of events may seduce or oblige him to do so. It is, indeed, possible that some wonderful interposition of God, or some sudden and heroic impulse falling upon the people, may even yet avert the terrible catastrophe, and arrest the destruction even as it is ready to descend. It is equally possible that, before these lines are printed, great armies which already face each other, may have fought one of those bloody and decisive battles, whose issues determine the fate not only of wars, but of ages. Ignorant of all the future, and imperfectly informed concerning passing events, it becomes us to speak with moderation and candor of the prospects before us. Penetrated with the deepest sorrow at the mournful, though it be in many respects sublime, scene which our country presents, we would forbear to speak at all, if it were not that the general tenor of what we purpose to utter, is designed to keep alive in the hearts of our countrymen the conviction that the whole country may, even yet, be restored; and to influence, so far as anything we can do may influence, the conduct of all these terrible affairs, to that end, and by that idea. It is this which is the burden of all we have hitherto said and done it is this which justifies nearly any effort, any sacrifice, any suffering, on the part of the nation- it is this which we must keep before the minds of men if we would preserve our countrymen from turning savages, under the influence of the civil war upon which we have entered, and for the prosecution of which such enormous preparations are made by both parties. II. The long and terrible reign of Parties. Majestic Reappearance of the Nation on the scene of Affairs. Great Truths accepted, and to be main tained. 1. For a long course of years political parties, sectional factions, and the clamor of demagogues, had given that sort of political education to the people, and occupied the thoughts of men with that description of political ideas and desires, that the nation the mighty American Nation—had disappeared from the area of our general politics. It had been for a whole generation Whig, and Democrat, and Republican, and Know-Nothing, and Secessionist, and Abolitionist, and Fire-Eater; the people rent, and confused, and maddened - fraud and violence reigning in the heated canvasses and elections and the most shameless corruption spreading like a pestilence amongst public men. The glorious Nation had disappeared utterly, as the controlling element in national affairs;-so utterly, that a President of the United States was found capable of conniving — whether through timidity, through folly, through imbecility, or through corruption let posterity decide-at the ruin of the nationality which his Government represented, and the overthrow of the Constitution by virtue of which it existed. So utterly, that a revolt openly conducted in flagrant contempt of the President, the Constitution, and the nation, and attended in all its stages by innumerable acts of war was allowed to spread from State to State, without the slightest attempt of the nation, or any one representing it, to make itself felt or even heard; until the vast extent of the revolt, and the great number of States on which the partizans of it had seized, became the chief embarrassment in dealing with it at all, and the main plea with timid statesmen why the degraded nation should accept its own destruction, as a fact fully accomplished. 2. That mighty Nation has reäppeared once more on the theatre of affairs. All thoughtful men knew that such a destruction as was attempted, could not be accomplished by war on one side, without begetting war on the other side. It may be considered madness in the Confederate Government to have preferred the bombardment of Fort Sumter, to its peaceable surrender in three days, through starvation. But it was a choice precisely in the spirit of every act towards the American nation and its Govern were ment, which had characterized the whole previous course of the revolt, and which has marked the whole treatment extended to Union men in every seceding State, to the present moment. It was possible to have divided the American nation peaceably, into two or more nations, by the consent of the American people, and the change of the Federal Constitution. But it was not, in the nature of things, possible to rend it by a military revolt, characterised by a spirit of contemptuous and reckless violence, alike illegal, unjust, and fatal, without arousing the outraged nation, and bringing all the mighty questions at issue, to that arbitrament of arms which the secessionists had chosen- - and by which, in one form or another of violence, they have achieved every conquest they have made. We are not partizans of the present National Administration, and have no adequate means of forming an opinion, as to whether the particular occasion and momentor whether earlier, or whether later, occasions and times best suited for armed resistance by it, to the progress of the great military revolt, whose avowed objects were the destruction of the Government, the overthrow of the Constitution, and the ruin of the nation. What we wish to signalize is the majestic reäppearance of the American Nation in the mighty scene - the simultaneous perishing of all factions, and disappearance of all parties but the party of the nation, and the party of secession and the unanimous conviction of all American citizens loyal to their country, that the National Government is the true and only lawful representative of the nation itself. With almost absolute unanimity the twenty millions of people in the nineteen Northern States; the great majority of the four millions of white persons in the five Border Slave States; and, as we firmly believe, a very large portion of the four millions of white people in the remaining ten Slave States, though now cruelly oppressed and silenced, cordially recognize these great truths, and will maintain themnamely, that the American people are a nation- that the Constitution and laws of the United States are supreme in this nation -that the Federal Government is the true and only legal representative of this nation, charged with the defence of its safety, the execution of its laws, and the protection of its liberties—in the execution of which duties it is bound to repel force by force. Nothing can give greater intensity to the facts and principles to which the foregoing statements relate, than a comparison of what has occurred in all the States which have seceded, with what has occurred in all those which have not seceded-touching the means by which the revolutionists have gained the mastery and silenced opposition in the former, and the manner in which the nation has spontaneously roused itself in its own defence in the latter. III. Duty of the Nation to loyal citizens in the seceded States. Their subjection to a Reign of Terror. Alleged unanimity in the seceded States. 1. Next in importance to the clear apprehension of the duty, which every loyal citizen of the nation owes to the National Government, in this most painful crisis - concerning which we have just endeavored to disclose the enthusiastic conviction of the nation itself; is an equally clear apprehension of the duty which the nation owes to loyal citizens in those States in which the revolutionary party has gained the ascendency, or in which that party may hereafter gain it. This latter question, as far as we know, seems not, as yet, to have been fully considered or determined by the General Government. The secession party seems to have decided it at once, and according to its violent instincts; and not only does their unanimous judgment demand of them exile, death, or conversion but their legal authorities are reputed to be prompt, and their ubiquitous committees of vigilance very vehement in the execution of a code-nearly as simple and efficacious as that of Mahomet himself. There is much reason to believe that the actual majority of votes was cast against the secessionists in several States upon which they have seized; that in several others held by them, such a majority would have been cast, if an opportunity had been allowed; that in not one of those States has there been a true and fair popular ratification of secession; that before the actual commencement of armed resistance on a large scale by the Federal Government, the actual majority of the people in the Confederate States, taken as a body, was hostile to secession; and that, undeniably, a certain number, and that considerable, of loyal citizens, are in every one of those States. Allowing that a state of things even tolerably near to that contained in the foregoing statement exists -nothing seems to us more clear than that the |