e
will have no incentive to insurrection. If emancipation is proclaimed at
the head of our armies--emancipation for _all_--confiscation for the
slaves of rebels, compensation for the slaves of loyal citizens--the
blacks will rush to the aid of our troops, the avenging angel will pass
over the homes of the many true and loyal men who are still left at the
South, and the thunderbolts of this war will fall only--where they
should fall--on the heads of its blood-stained authors. If this is not
done, after we have put down the whites we shall have to meet the
blacks, and after we have waded knee-deep in the blood of both, we
shall end the war where it began, but with the South desolated by fire
and sword, the North impoverished and loaded down with an everlasting
debt, and our once proud, happy, and glorious country the by-word and
scorn of the civilized world.

Slavery is the very bones, marrow, and life-blood of this rebellion, and
it cannot be crushed till we have destroyed that accursed institution.
If a miserable peace is patched up before a death-stroke is given to
slavery, it will gather new strength, and drive freedom from this
country forever. In the nature of things it cannot exist in the same
hemisphere with liberty. Then let every man who loves his country
determine that if this war must needs last for twenty years, it shall
not end until this root of all our political evils is weeded out
forever.

A short half-hour took us to the plantation, where I found the Colonel
on the piazza awaiting me. After our greeting was over, noticing my
soiled and rather dilapidated condition, he inquired where I had passed
the night. I told him, when he burst into a hearty fit of laughter, and
for several days good-naturedly bantered me about "putting up" at the
most aristocratic hotel in South Carolina--the "Mills House."

We soon entered the mansion, and the reader will, I trust, pardon me, if
I leave him standing in its door-way till another chapter.

CHAPTER V.

ON THE PLANTATION.

The last chapter left the reader in the door-way of the Colonel's
mansion. Before entering, we will linger there awhile and survey the
outside of the premises.

The house stands where two roads meet, and, unlike most planters'
dwellings, is located in full view of the highway. It is a rambling,
disjointed structure, thrown together with no regard to architectural
rules, and yet there is a rude harmony in its very irregularities that