"I quite agree in all that you said in your last letter. 'The imp
of secession can't reenter its mother's womb.' It is merely
childish to talk of the Union 'as it was.' You might as well bring
back the Saxon Heptarchy. But the great Republic is destined to
live and flourish, I can't doubt. . . . Do you remember that
wonderful scene in Faust in which Mephistopheles draws wine for the
rabble with a gimlet out of the wooden table; and how it changes to
fire as they drink it, and how they all go mad, draw their knives,
grasp each other by the nose, and think they are cutting off bunches
of grapes at every blow, and how foolish they all look when they
awake from the spell and see how the Devil has been mocking them?
It always seems to me a parable of the great Secession.

"I repeat, I can't doubt as to the ultimate result. But I dare say
we have all been much mistaken in our calculations as to time.
Days, months, years, are nothing in history. Men die, man is
immortal, practically, even on this earth. We are so impatient,--
and we are always watching for the last scene of the tragedy. Now I
humbly opine that the drop is only about falling on the first act,
or perhaps only the prologue. This act or prologue will be called,
in after days, War for the status quo. "Such enthusiasm, heroism,
and manslaughter as status quo could inspire, has, I trust, been not
entirely in vain, but it has been proved insufficient.

"I firmly believe that when the slaveholders declared war on the
United States government they began a series of events that, in the
logical chain of history, cannot come to a conclusion until the last
vestige of slavery is gone. Looking at the whole field for a moment
dispassionately, objectively, as the dear Teutonic philosophers say,
and merely as an exhibition of phenomena, I cannot imagine any other