616 The Fall of the Confederacy. 
petuation of negro bondage, which must have followed 
from any pacific settlement. The war commences and the 
fate of the negro still appears uncertain. If, according to 
expectation, the conflict had been over in one or two cam- 
paigns, whether the North or the South had been victo- 
rious, the negro would not have been emancipated; or, 
if the North had been successful from the outset, it is 
doubtful if the negro would have been emancipated, even 
though the war had been protracted. But the South fought 
magnificently and victoriously, and forced a policy of 
emancipation on the North for the sake of the Union. If 
the North had not been devoted to the Union there would 
have been peace without emancipation. If the South had 
not been devoted to the cause of independence, there 
would have been peace without emancipation. The love of 
the Union, the love of independence, were for a while the 
conflicting passions that brought about negro emancipation. 
The untimely revolution, the precipitate war, the eventful 
and varied fortunes of the war, were all necessary to 
emancipation. Then, when the work was done, when the 
negro was emancipated, the Confederacy died. 
It was indeed possible that the Confederacy might have 
been established if the Confederate administration had 
adopted a policy of emancipation. But it was not so, and 
therefore the emancipation of the negro did not involve the 
dissolution of the Union. 
The cost was awful enough. What a loss of treasure, 
what a river of blood, what burning hate, what grief, what 
agonies did the four years’ conflict cost! Let us be thankful 
that all the afflictions were not in vain, but that they pur- 
chased the redemption of a race from immemorial bondage. 
Without the revolution these would not have been eman- 
cipated, and without emancipation the days of the Union 
were numbered. Every hour the chasm grew broader and 
deeper. A few years more of abolitionism in the North and 
of negro slavery in the South, and the disintegration of the 
Union would have been irremediable. North and South, now 
one people, did not offer up their sons in vain. Without war 
was there a prospect of emancipation? Without emanci- 
pation could the Union have endured? 
The battle is over, and it has not left a legacy of hate. 
Heroically have the people of the South borne with their 
defeat, for they have accepted it without chafing ; and from 
the hour that Robert Lee surrendered they have been loyal 
to the Union, as their fathers were, and as they were 
