THE RESULT. 383 



foe. The astute and cautious statesman at the head 

 of affairs perceived that the time had come ; the con- 

 stitution was suspended during the war ; and so, in all 

 legality and with due form, he set free in one day four 

 million slaves. 



It is impossible to view without compassion the mis- 

 fortunes of men who merely followed in the footsteps 

 of their fathers, and were in no sense more guilty than 

 Washington and Jefferson, who remained slaveholders 

 to their dying day. It was easy for Great Britain to 

 pay twenty millions ; it was easy for the Northern 

 States to emancipate their slaves, who were few in 

 number, and not necessary to their life. But it was im- 

 possible for the South to abandon slavery. The money 

 of a planter was sunk in flesh and blood. Yet the 

 Southern politicians must be blamed for their crazy 

 ambition, and their blind ignorance of the world. In- 

 stead of preparing as the Cuban planters are preparing 

 now for those changes which had been rendered inevit- 

 able by the progress of mankind, they supposed that 

 it was in their power to defy the Spirit of the Age, and 

 to establish an empire on the pattern of ancient Rome. 

 They firmly believed that, because they could not 

 exist without selling cotton, Great Britain could not 

 exist without buying it from them ; which is like a 

 shopkeeper supposing he could ruin his customers by 

 putting up his shutters. It may console those who 

 yet lament the Lost Cause, if we picture for their benefit 

 what the Southern empire would have been. There 

 would have been an aristocracy of planters, herds of 

 slaves, a servile press, a servile pulpit, and a rabble of 

 mean whites formed into an army. Abolition societies 

 would have been established on the North, to instigate 

 slaves to rebel or run away ; a cordon of posts with a 



