doom of slavery. The
enlightened world will not always permit it to blast the fair field of
civilization by its poisonous presence.

There is a law of human movement by which predominating conditions
extend and perpetuate themselves, overcoming those which are weaker and
on the wane. We observed this in our brief survey of the feudal system.
Freedom is now in the ascendant, and slavery must go down. And since
secession is the child of slavery, and both at war with the cardinal
principles of progressive civilization, it is meet that both should fall
together.

This war may not directly extinguish slavery, and it may; we do not see
the end. But if not directly, we believe the war is, nevertheless,
indirectly setting those forces into action which will eventually
extinguish the institution. If the 'confederacy' should be destroyed,
as, if not saved by foreign intervention, it certainly will be, slavery,
if not already dead, will be pent up, and, in that case, will soon die
by its own hands.

Immediate interests control us more than those which are remote;
interests which affect ourselves, more than those which affect our
descendants. Citizens of the Southern States, to save a petty individual
interest, are nursing in the bosom of society a malignant canker, which,
if let alone, must one day, in the inevitable course of destiny, eat
into its vitals. Heroic treatment will alone meet the demands of the
case. It must be a surgical operation that will penetrate to the very
roots of the invading tumor.

The salvation of the South itself, as well as of the Union, hangs upon
the extinction of slavery. Indeed, the South has far more interest than
the North in the restoration of political health as the condition of
political union; and she would see it so, if slavery had not made her
blind. The elimination of slavery would, in the end, be clear gain to
her, while she would reap equally with the North the advantages of
union, and escape the disadvantages and calamities which, as we have
seen, must inevitably follow in the wake of confirmed disunion.

The writer of this article bases his opposition to slavery solely upon
politico-scientific grounds; he urges the recognition of a great law of
human development, that its bearings on human destiny may be fairly
seen, and human endeavor more wisely directed to the achievement of the
end 'so devoutly to be wished.' The discussion of American Destiny in
all its ramifications would in