that it might come, and having come we must see what is to be done,
and manfully deal with it.

It is easy to talk of emancipation, but he has thought loosely and
ill who sees no great difficulties in bringing it to a happy issue;
who has not questions arise in his mind to give him pause when he
contemplates a social change so vast in state of a race of twelve
millions of men. Let not the reader suppose a mistake in the
figures, we mean twelve millions, and not four; there are, indeed,
four millions of slaves to be made free, but a change is to be
wrought in the social state of the eight millions of the whites,
which is only less than that of the blacks. To alter radically, to
remodel the whole social fabric of a great and numerous people, to
shift the foundation stones, remove them, and place others in their
palaces, without racking the edifice or tumbling it in a hideous
ruin, is the work of no inexperienced or careless architect.

The gigantic war which has been desolating one half of this
land, has been, as we have said, simply the mighty frantic effort
of a social state to establish itself; of a peculiar civilization
to consolidate its power. The result of the war will be the total
defeat of this attempt; the very endeavor, the waging of the
war has shaken its foundation, its end will remove it entirely.
This civilization, whose basis is slavery, has chosen to risk its
existence on the issue of the war: it must accept the alternative
which it has raised, and be content to pass away.

The war will decide the question of slavery, and with it alter the
whole form of society at the South which rests upon it. But one
civilization cannot pass away and leave a vacuum; one state of