istance, and has
far more spontaneous sympathy with Nat Turner than with Uncle Tom. But
be it as it may with our desires, the rising of the slaves, in case of
continued war, is a mere destiny. We must take facts as they are.

Insurrection is one of the risks voluntarily assumed by Slavery,--and
the greatest of them. The slaves know it, and so do the masters. When
they seriously assert that they feel safe on this point, there is really
no answer to be made but that by which Traddles in "David Copperfield"
puts down Uriah Heep's wild hypothesis of believing himself an innocent
man. "But you don't, you know," quoth the straightforward Traddles;
"therefore, if you please, we won't suppose any such thing." They cannot
deceive us, for they do not deceive themselves. Every traveller who has
seen the faces of a household suddenly grow pale, in a Southern
city, when some street tumult struck to their hearts the fear of
insurrection,--every one who has seen the heavy negro face brighten
unguardedly at the name of John Brown, though a thousand miles away
from Harper's Ferry,--has penetrated the final secret of the military
weakness which saved Washington for us and lost the war for them.

It is time to expose this mad inconsistency which paralyzes common sense
on all Southern tongues, so soon as Slavery becomes the topic. These
same negroes, whom we hear claimed, at one moment, as petted darlings
whom no allurements can seduce, are denounced, next instant, as fiends
whom a whisper can madden. Northern sympathizers are first ridiculed
as imbecile, then lynched as destructive. Either position is in itself
intelligible, but the combination is an absurdity. We can understand
why the proprietor of a powder-house trembles at the sight of flint
and steel; and we can also understand why some new journeyman, being
inexperienced, may regard the peril without due concern. But we should
decide either to be a lunatic, if he in one breath proclaimed his
gunpowder to be incombustible, and at the next moment assassinated a
visitor for lighting a cigar on the premises. A slave population is
either contented and safe, or discontented and unsafe; it cannot at the
same time be friendly and hostile, blissful and desperate.

The result described is inevitable, should the Secessionists dare to
tempt the ordeal by battle long enough. If it stop short of this, it
will be because the prestige of Southern military power is so easily
broken down that there