imes a duty of hanging men for it; but
rebellion continues to be rebellion until it has accomplished its
object and secured the acknowledgment of it from the other party to
the quarrel, and from the world at large. The Republican Party in the
November elections had really effected a peaceful revolution, had
emancipated the country from the tyranny of an oligarchy which had
abused the functions of the Government almost from the time of its
establishment, to the advancement of their own selfish aims and
interests; and it was this legitimate change of rulers and of national
policy by constitutional means which the Secessionists intended to
prevent. To put the matter in plain English, they resolved to treat the
people of the United States, in the exercise of their undoubted and
lawful authority, as rebels, and resorted to their usual policy of
intimidation in order to subdue them. Either this magnificent empire
should be their plantation, or it should perish. This was the view even
of what were called the moderate slave-holders of the Border States;
and all the so-called compromises and plans of reconstruction that were
thrown into the caldron where the hell-broth of anarchy was brewing had
this extent,--no more,--What terms of _submission_ would the people make
to their natural masters? Whatever other result may have come of the
long debates in Congress and elsewhere, they have at least convinced the
people of the Free States that there can be no such thing as a moderate
slave-holder,--that moderation and slavery can no more coexist than
Floyd and honesty, or Anderson and treason.

We believe, then, that conciliation was from the first impossible,--that
to attempt it was unwise, because it put the party of law and loyalty in
the wrong,--and that, if it was done as a mere matter of policy in order
to gain time, it was a still greater mistake, because it was the rebels
only who could profit by it in consolidating their organization, while
the seeming gain of a few days or weeks was a loss to the Government,
whose great advantage was in an administrative system thoroughly
established, and, above all, in the vast power of the national idea, a
power weakened by every day's delay. This is so true, that already men
began to talk of the rival governments at Montgomery and Washington, and
Canadian journals recommend a strict neutrality, as if the independence
and legitimacy of the mushroom despotism of New Ashantee were an
acknowle