hen one of them, like
Vallandigham, deliberately transcends the bounds of a wise forbearance,
and receives from the Government a very mild rebuke. Straightway he is
placed on the bad eminence to which he has so long aspired. Already dead
to all feeling of patriotism, he is canonized for his crimes, with rites
and ceremonies appropriate to such a priesthood. And, unhappily, he
finds but too many followers weak enough or wicked enough to recognize
his saintship and accept his creed. To all true and loyal men, he
resembles rather the veiled prophet of Khorassan, concealing behind the
fair mask of a zealous regard for free speech and a free press the
hideous features of Secession and civil war, despising the dupes whom he
is leading to certain and swift destruction, and clinging fondly to the
hope of involving in a common ruin, not only the party which he
represents, but the country which he has dishonored.

That such political monsters are possible in the Free States, at such a
time as this, sufficiently demonstrates towards what an abyss of
degradation we were drifting when this war began. They are the
legitimate and necessary fruits of the numerous compromises by which
well-meaning men have sought to avert a crisis which could only be
postponed. The North has been diligently educated to connive at
injustice and wink at oppression for the sake of peace, until there was
good reason to fear that the public sense of right was blunted, and the
public conscience seared as with a hot iron. While the South kept always
clearly in view the single object on which it had staked everything, the
North was daily growing more and more absorbed in the accumulation of
wealth, and more and more callous to all considerations of humanity and
all claims of natural justice. The feeblest remonstrance against the
increasing insolence of Southern demands was rudely dismissed as
fanatical, and any attempt to awaken attention to the disloyal
sentiments of Southern politicians was believed to be fully met
and conclusively answered by the cry of "Abolitionist" and
"Negro-Worshipper."

It must be confessed that for a time these expedients were successful.
Like another Cassandra predicting the coming disasters of another Troy,
the statesman who foresaw and foretold the perils which threatened the
nation addressed a careless or contemptuous public. It was in vain to
say that the South was determined to rule or ruin the country, in vain
to point out th