.' 'No matter what compromise the North offers,' said
Mason, 'the South must find a way to defeat it.' These are facts
undeniable and undenied. They demonstrate the falsehood and folly of the
men who talk of bringing the rebels back into the Union by concessions.
The South did not want guarantees; it wanted separation. It determined
to set up an independent slave empire, and no concession you can make
will lead them to abandon their determination. Undo the recent
legislation of Congress, reestablish slavery in the District of
Columbia, and repeal the prohibition of slavery in the Territories, and
you make the Union 'as it was,' so far as the North is concerned; but
will that bring back the South? No. Go still further, and make the Union
_more_ than 'it was' for them; yield them the principle of the Lemmon
Case, and so allow them to call the roll of their slaves under the
shadow of Bunker Hill, and to convert New-York Battery into a slave-mart
for the convenience of slave-breeding Virginia and the slave-buying Gulf
States; and will these concessions lead the rebels to lay down their
arms and return into the Union? No. They will never lay down their arms
until they are conquered by overwhelming military force. They will never
be in the Union until subjugated. And I think the rebellion will never
be extinguished without extinguishing slavery. Then, and not before,
will the conditions begin to exist of lasting peace and true union
between the South and the North. Then, and not before, will there be
genuine prosperity, a true social order, and a decent civilization in
the South.

And since 'the Union _as it was_' is a thing that never can be again, it
is not worth while to concern ourselves overmuch about 'the Constitution
as _it is_,' so far as those who raise the outcry for it have any
determinate meaning in their cry. For here, too, the reestablishment of
the political power of slavery is the only point in their view.

The Constitution--in its great substance, in its essential principles,
in the general frame of government it establishes, in its organization
of powers, in its main provisions, and in most of its details--is an
instrument which probably few wise and patriotic Americans would care to
see altered, and none would wish to see subverted. But the constitutions
of all governments, written or unwritten, (and each sort has its special
advantages and disadvantages,) are more or less subject to change--must
change an