This Message Of The President's Was Intended To Signify That Secession On Favorable Terms Might Be Regarded By The North As Not Undesirable.

Moderate men were beginning to whisper that, after all, the Gulf States were no source either of national wealth or of national honor.

Had there not been enough at Washington of cotton lords and cotton laws? When I have suggested that no Senator from Georgia would ever again sit in the United States Senate, American gentlemen have received my remark with a slight demur, and have then proceeded to argue the case. Six months before they would have declared against me and not have argued.

I will leave it to Americans themselves to say whether that disintegration of the States will, should it ever be realized, imply that they have failed in their political undertaking. If they do not protest that it argues failure, I do not think that their feelings will be hurt by such protestations on the part of others. I have said that the blunder made by the founders of the nation with regard to slavery has brought with it this secession as its punishment. But such punishments come generally upon nations as great mercies. Ireland's famine was the punishment of her imprudence and idleness, but it has given to her prosperity and progress. And indeed, to speak with more logical correctness, the famine was no punishment to Ireland, nor will secession be a punishment to the Northern States. In the long result, step will have gone on after step, and effect will have followed cause, till the American people will at last acknowledge that all these matters have been arranged for their advantage and promotion. It may be that a nation now and then goes to the wall, and that things go from bad to worse with a large people. It has been so with various nations, and with many people since history was first written. But when it has been so, the people thus punished have been idle and bad. They have not only done evil in their generation, but have done more evil than good, and have contributed their power to the injury rather than to the improvement of mankind. It may be that this or that national fault may produce or seem to produce some consequent calamity. But the balance of good or evil things which fall to a people's share will indicate with certainty their average conduct as a nation. The one will be the certain sequence of the other. If it be that the Americans of the Northern States have done well in their time, that they have assisted in the progress of the world, and made things better for mankind rather than worse, then they will come out of this trouble without eventual injury. That which came in the guise of punishment for a special fault, will be a part of the reward resulting from good conduct in the general. And as to this matter of slavery, in which I think that they have blundered both politically and morally, has it not been found impossible hitherto for them to cleanse their hands of that taint? But that which they could not do for themselves the course of events is doing for them.

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