Now let every friend of the Union boldly assume that _so far as the
settlement of this question is concerned he_ does not care one straw for
the Negro. Leave the Negro out altogether. Let him sink or swim, so far
as this difficulty goes. Men have tried for thirty years to appeal to
humanity, without success, for the Negro, and now let us try some other
expedient. Let us regard him not as a man and a brother, but as 'a
miserable nigger,' if you please, and a nuisance. But whatever he be, if
the effect of owning such creatures is to make the owner an intolerable
fellow, seditious and insolent, it becomes pretty clear that such
ownership should be put an end to. If Mr. Smith can not have a horse
without riding over his neighbor, it is quite time that Smith were
unhorsed, no matter how honestly he may have acquired the animal. And if
the Smiths, father and sons, threaten to keep their horse in spite of
law,--nay, and breed up a race of horses from him, whereon to roughride
everybody who goes afoot,--then it becomes still more imperative that
the Smith family cease cavaliering it altogether.
There is yet another point which the stanch Union-lover must keep in
view. In pushing on the war with heart and soul, we inevitably render
slaveholding at any rate a most precarious institution, and one likely
to be broken up altogether.
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