necessity from the first. But it takes time to accustom a whole
people to the thought, and to make them see the necessity. It was
impossible for Northern men to fathom the spirit and the desperate
exigencies of the slave system and its outbreak, and consequently to
comprehend the desperate nature of the struggle. We were like a
policeman endeavoring to arrest a boy-ruffian, and, for the sake of
his friends and for old acquaintance sake, doing it with all possible
tenderness for his person and his feelings--till all of a sudden he
feels the grip on his throat and the dagger's point at his breast,
and knows that it is a life-and-death grapple.

Slaveholding is simply piracy continued. Our people are beginning to
spell out that short and easy lesson in the light of perjury,
robbery, assassination, poisoning, and all the more than Algerine
atrocities of this rebellion. It cannot require many more months of
schooling like the last eight, to convince the dullest of us what are
its essence and spirit.

Our people also are rapidly finding out that no peaceful termination
of this war will be permitted now by the Slave Power, except by its
thorough overthrow. The robber has thrown off the mask, and says now
to the nation, "Your life or mine!" Even the compromising Everett
has boldly told the South, "To be let alone is not all you ask--but
you demand a great deal more." And in his late oration, he has most
powerfully portrayed the impossibility of a peaceful disunion. Many
men, some anti-slavery, were at first inclined to yield to the idea
of a separation. But every day's experience is scattering that notion
to the winds. The ferocious spirit exhibited from the first by the
Secessionists towards all dissentients, the invasion of Western
Virginia by Eastern, the threats to put down loyal Kentucky, the