the entire success of the United States
Government in the reassertion of its own authority over the whole of its
original domain, divided, at the commencement of the war, into two
branches.

It was the general theory at the North, at that time, that the _animus_
of rebellion was confined at the South to comparatively few minds, and
that the war was to be a war, not against the South as a people, but
against a tyrannical and usurping faction at the South, and for the
defence of the people at large residing in that region. There was a
modicum of truth in this theory, but events have shown, and any one who
knew the South well might safely have predicted, that the whole people
there would soon be subdued to the authority of those few. Such was the
terror throughout the confederacy, and still is, where the facts have
not been already changed by the war, at the mere imputation of sympathy
with anti-slavery sentiment in any form, that a part, hardly one tenth
even of the whole, in numerical strength, could successfully put the
remaining nine tenths into Coventry, and bully them out of all
expression of adverse opinion, by simply threatening to accuse them of
abolition tendencies. No people on earth were ever so completely _cowed_
by the nightmare of unpopular opinion as the people of the South. Hence
whatever was violently advocated under pretence of excessive devotion
to, or ultra championship of the cause of slavery, was sure in the end
to succeed. By this process, the Union party at the South has been
gradually overawed and diminished for years past, and finally driven,
since the outbreak of the rebellion, into a complete surrender to, and a
full cooeperation with the rebel chiefs. Whatever may seem to be the
reaction in behalf of Union sentiment, as the triumphant armies of the
North march to the Gulf, it will be long before the real opinion of the
masses will declare itself in full as it exists. The fear of the renewal
of the old terrorism, so soon as our armies shall be withdrawn, will
effectually prevent the free expression of the favorable sentiment which
has heretofore existed, and still exists, as a substratum of Southern
opinion in favor of the Union, unless the Northern conquest is made
unquestionably final.

In the event that the theory just stated should have proved true, that,
aided by the presence of Northern troops, there should have been a loyal
sentiment sufficiently powerful and extended to reassert itsel