done without treating the slaves like human beings, nor without so
large an employment of skilled, that is, of free labor, as will widely
displace the unskilled, and so depreciate the pecuniary value of the
slave, that the immediate mitigation and ultimate extinction of
slavery would be a nearly inevitable and probably rapid consequence.

The Republican leaders do not talk to the public of these almost
certain results of success in the present conflict. They talk but
little, in the existing emergency, even of the original cause of
quarrel. The most ordinary policy teaches them to inscribe on their
banner that part only of their known principles in which their
supporters are unanimous. The preservation of the Union is an object
about which the North are agreed; and it has many adherents, as they
believe, in the South generally. That nearly half the population of
the Border Slave States are in favor of it is a patent fact, since
they are now fighting in its defence. It is not probable that they
would be willing to fight directly against slavery. The Republicans
well know that if they can reëstablish the Union, they gain everything
for which they originally contended; and it would be a plain breach of
faith with the Southern friends of the Government, if, after rallying
them round its standard for a purpose of which they approve, it were
suddenly to alter its terms of communion without their consent.

But the parties in a protracted civil war almost invariably end by
taking more extreme, not to say higher grounds of principle, than they
began with. Middle parties and friends of compromise are soon left
behind; and if the writers who so severely criticize the present
moderation of the Free-soilers are desirous to see the war become an
abolition war, it is probable that if the war lasts long enough they
will be gratified. Without the smallest pretension to see further into