f Columbia, the receiving and feeding of fugitive
slaves, the employment of negroes as Government teamsters, the repeal in
the Senate of the law prohibiting free negroes to carry the mail, the
legalizing of the testimony of blacks, the attempt 'to create an
Abolition party in the Border States' by the offer of compensation to
the owners in such States as may adopt the policy of emancipation, and
lastly, the Confiscation Act, which takes away the property of rebels
and sets free their slaves. These things they denounce in the bitterest
terms--some of them as 'wounding to the sensibilities of the South,' and
some of them as atrocious outrages on the rights of the rebels,
calculated to drive them to such 'desperation' that they will never
consent, on any entreaty of their Northern friends, to accept their old
position of political control in the 'Union as it was.'

Some of these men talk, indeed, of putting down the rebellion by the
strong arm; but they talk a great deal more of putting down
Abolitionism--which with them means not only hostility to slavery, but
even the disposition to acquiesce in the military necessity of its
extinction. They sometimes go to the length of talking of 'hanging the
secessionists;' but then, you will observe, they always talk of hanging
the 'Abolitionists' along with them. They want them to dangle at the
other end of the same rope. It is easy, however, to perceive that the
hanging of the secessionists is not the emphatic thing--with many not
even the real thing, but only an ebullition of vexation at them for
having spoiled the old Democratic trade--a figurative hanging--often,
indeed, only a rhetorical tub thrown out prudentially to the popular
whale, who might not be quite content to hear them talk of hanging only
on one side: but the hanging of the Abolitionists, there is no mistaking
their feelings about that; there is a hearty smack of malignant relish
on their lips when they speak of it.

These men are as foolish as they are traitorous in their cry for the
Union as it was. The Union 'as it was' is a thing that never can be
again. They say the South wants nothing but guarantee for the security
of its constitutional slave rights--if that had been given they would
never have taken up arms; give them that and they will lay them down.
Nothing more false. Just before the secession of South-Carolina, Pryor
telegraphed from Washington: 'We can get the Crittenden Compromise, but
we don't want it