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ART. IV.-L'Abolition de l'Esclavage. ParAUGUSTIN COCHIN, ancien Maire et Conseiller de la Ville de Paris. Paris: Jacques Lecoffre. 1861. 2 Tomes. 8vo.

THE reasons assigned for not being able to review the excellent work of Père Valroger, apply with equal force against our ability to review, as its merits deserve, the admirable work, by our highly esteemed friend, M. Augustin Cochin, on The Abolition of Slavery, which he has recently published, and of which he has done us the honor to send us a copy. We have, however, so far violated the strict injunctions of our physician as to look at a few of its pages, enough to enable us to judge of its general character, and to pronounce it a work of rare merit.

The first volume gives the result of the abolition of slavery by France and England in their Colonies, and establishes the fact that it has been effected without ruin and without disturbance. A storm, an insect, a year of drought would, in a material point of view, have caused more evil; while, in a moral and religious point of view, the good has been immense, although few precautions had been taken to secure it. The second volume is devoted to the United States, Holland, Brazil, the Spanish and Portugese Colo nies, the slave-trade, Africa, and the influence of Christianity on slavery. We have noticed a few trifling inaccuracies in regard to our own country. The author reckons Wisconsin among the Slave States; but we are happy to say that Wisconsin is not only a Free State, but one of the most decided anti-slavery States in the Union. He says New York was originally settled by Germans-it was originally settled by the Dutch from Holland, who are not usually called Germans by us, though of the Germanic family. Maryland was not colonized by Irish Catholics, but by English Catholics and Protestants. George Calvert had an Irish title, but was himself an Englishman. These errors, however, are very slight, and detract nothing from the real value of the work. As far as we have been able to read it, we have found the views of the author very just, philanthropic, liberal, and truly Christian. Two abler or more intensely interesting volumes on the subject of the abolition of slavery, it has not been our good fortune to meet; and they are creditable in the highest degree to the ability, industry, and noble sentiments of their distinguished author.

The question of the abolition of slavery is becoming with us a practical question in a sense it has never before been. The Rebellion of the Slave States, which has for its object, not so much the dissolution of the Union, or the separation of the South from the North, as the reconstruction of the Union on the basis of slavery, or, as the Vice-President of the Confederate States has it, with "slavery as its cornerstone," and therefore the extension of slavery over the whole country, cannot fail to force this question upon the grave attention of every citizen of the loyal States, who loves his country, and believes in the practicability of freedom. The Slave States, by their rebellion and war on the the Union, are compelling us to regard this question as one which must soon be practically met, and are forcing all loyal citizens to make their election between the preservation of the Union and the preservation of slavery. This, whatever the Federal administration, whatever individuals or parties in the Free States, with, or without Southern or pro-slavery proclivities, may wish or desire, is pretty soon to be the inevitable issue of the terrible struggle in which our glorious, and hitherto peaceful Republic is now engaged. Perhaps, at the moment we write, the last of August, a majority of the people of the Free States may not only shrink from this issue, but even honestly believe it possible to avert it altogether. The bare suggestion of the abolition of slavery may shock, perhaps, enrage them; but events march, and men who mean to be successful, or not to be left behind, must march with them. Another disaster, like that of Bull Run, or another unsuccessful action, like that of Wilson's Creek, where the brave and noblehearted Lyon fell, a martyr to the cause of his country, and a victim to the failure of his government to send him timely aid, will do much to change the feelings and convictions of the loyal citizens of the Free States, and, perhaps, force them to give up the last hope or thought of preserving both the Union and the institution of slavery. It requires, however chary our public men may be even of whispering it, no extraordinary sagacity or foresight to perceive that, if the present war is to be continued, and the integrity of the nation restored and maintained, the war can hardly fail to become a war of liberation, or that the Northern blood and treasure, which it demands for its successful prosecution, will demand in return, as their indemnification, the emancipation of the slave, and the universal adoption

for the South as well as the North of our Free Labor System.

We need not say, for the fact is well known to our readers, that no man, according to his ability and opportunity, has, since April, 1838, more strenuously opposed the abolition movement in the Free States than we have; not because we loved slavery, or had any sympathy with that hateful institution, but because we loved the Constitution of the Union, and because we believed that liberty at home and throughout the world was far more interested in preserving the union of these States under the Federal constitution, than in abolishing slavery as it existed in the Southern section of our common country. But we believe, and always have believed, that liberty, the cause of free institutions, the hopes of philanthropists and Christians, both at home and abroad, are more interested in preserving the Union and the integrity of the nation, than they are or can be in maintaining negro-slavery. If we have opposed abolition heretofore because we would preserve the Union, we must, a fortiori, oppose slavery whenever, in our judgment, its continuance becomes incompatible with the maintenance of the Union, or of our nation as a free republican state.

Certainly we said in the article on The Great Rebellion in our last Review, the North has not taken up arms for the destruction of negro-slavery, but for the maintenance of the Federal government, the enforcement of the laws, and the preservation of the Union. This is true. The liberation of the slave is not the purpose and end of the war in which we are now engaged. The war is a war against rebellion, an unprovoked and wicked rebellion, engaged in by the Rebels for the purpose of making this a great Slaveholding Republic, in which the labor of the country shall be performed by slaves, either black or white; and if, to defeat the Rebellion, the destruction of slavery be rendered necessary and be actually effected, it will change nothing in the character or purpose of the war. It will have been necessitated by the Rebellion, and the Rebels will have only themselves to thank for the destruction or abolition they force us to adopt in defence of liberty, the Union, and the authority of the government.

arms,

The real question now before the loyal States is not, whether the Rebellion shall be suppressed by force of or a peaceful division of the country into two separate and independent Republics submitted to. Any one who has

any knowledge of the plans and purposes of the Rebels, knows well, that the division of the territory of the Union into two independent Republics is far short of what they are aiming at. The leaders of the Rebellion, they who planned it, they who have stirred it up, and armed it against the Union, have worked themselves into the conviction, that slavery is not to be looked upon as an evil, under certain circumstances to be tolerated, but as a good to be desired, which religion and humanity require not only to be perpetuated, but extended the farthest possible. Their doctrine is, that liberty is not practicable for a whole people, that it is practicable only for a class or a race; and that republicanism can subsist and be practically beneficial, only where the laboring class is deprived of all political and civil rights, and reduced to slavery. Their plan, their purpose is, the reconstruction of the Federal government in accordance with this theory, not merely to cut themselves loose from all companionship with the non-Slaveholding States of the North and North-West. They propose to extend slavery over the whole Union, and, in those States where negroes cannot be profitably employed as laborers, to reduce, perhaps gradually, but ultimately and effectually, to the condition of slaves, the present class of free white laborers, who in the Free States are, to a great extent, Irish and Germans, by birth or immediate descent.

The reconstruction of the Union on the basis of slavery is the real aim of the chiefs of the Southern Rebellion, which reconstruction would give them a government similar in its essential features to that of ancient pagan Rome, and a government, if the States held together, prepared for future conquest. The Union reconstructed, it could proceed to the conquest of Mexico and Central America, and reduce their negro and colored populations to slavery, which would be counted their Americanization. This done, it could proceed, beginning with Cuba, to the annexation, one after another, of the West India Islands. It then could extend its power over the whole continent of South America, and threaten an advance upon Eastern Asia, and the annexation of all the cotton-producing countries and tropi cal regions of the globe, and through the monopoly of cotton, rice, and tropical productions in general, to obtain the control of the commerce and credit of all nations. Such, to a greater or less extent, is the dream which Southern statesmen have indulged, and which they have taken the VOL. II.-No. IV.

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first step toward realizing. In its full extent no sane man supposes the dream practicable; but its practicability, up to a certain point, has been demonstrated by the success which has hitherto attended the Rebellion, for, up to the present, successful it undeniably has been. The Confederates have brought into the field a more effective, if not a larger force than the Federal government has thus far brought against them; and, from the Potomac to the Mississippi, they hold the strategic lines, and can be met by the Federal forces only at great disadvantage. As yet not one of those lines has been wrested from them.

Now, suppose we adopt the policy urged upon us by the peace-makers, traitors, and cowards of the loyal States, consent to a peaceful division of the United States, and recognize the Southern Confederacy as a separate and independent nation, what would be the result? Two comparatively equal independent Republics, existing side by side? Not at all. Spread out the map of the United States before you, and see which Republic would have the advantage in territory, soil, climate, productions, and all the sources of national wealth, strength, and material greatness. You would give to the Southern Republic full three-fourths of the whole territory of the Union; for the South would consent to no division now, that did not include the States of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and all the territory South of the line running due west from the northwest angle of Missouri to the Pacific. You would give up to the South, to what would then be a foreign power, the whole Gulf coast, and the whole Atlantic coast, except the narrow strip from the Penobscot to the Delaware. You would leave the North a majority of the present population of the country, and nominally the superiority in wealth, it is true: but as the present superior numbers and wealth of the North depend chiefly on our superiority in commerce and manufactures, their superiority could not be long maintained. The Southern Republic, producing raw materials consumed chiefly in Europe, would be a great exporting republic, and would naturally in its policy favor exports to European markets. From those markets where it disposes of its raw materials, it could, by means of a lower tariff on imports than the Northern Republic could afford to adopt, more easily and cheaply supply its own demand for imports than it could from our Northern markets. It would thus drive our manufactures from its markets, and,

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