The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863, page 139 by Various Authors
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destined to ultimate defeat, has secured for themselves the greatest boon which even the highest wisdom in the calmest times could have conferred. Their prodigious folly and wickedness have been overruled by a higher power, and mercifully directed to the complete regeneration of Southern society. The operation is severe, but in the end it will be salutary. In a state of continued peace, this could not have been done. Scores of years would have been required to prepare the Southern mind for it; but now, by one huge convulsive effort, made by themselves with far different views, all obstacles are swept away, and slavery is likely to come to a sudden and final end. A feeble insurrection, soon extinguished, would not have accomplished this work; and even now, if the war should speedily end, there would be serious embarrassment in disposing of the troublesome questions arising out of the subject. The continuance of the war, on its present basis, will soon settle the whole difficulty; and among the many tremendous evils and calamities attending the progress of the war, this inevitable result is one of the greatest compensations. Few men, perhaps, would have desired, or, by deliberate action, have promoted this violent destruction even of so pernicious a system as that which prevailed in the South; but, on the other hand, with the experience of the last two years, still fewer men, in the loyal States at least, can be found to deny that the judgment is righteous, and that, in the actual circumstances, it is destined to be in the end as beneficial to the Southern people themselves, as it is, in its immediate consequences, just in its retribution for their enormous crime. In the progress of so tremendous a war, in which, notwithstanding its origin and cause, the insurrectionary States have strangely been enabled to command foreign capital, together with the sympathy and even the indirect assistance of foreign powers, it would have been shortsighted in the extreme to have anticipated that slavery would escape attack. Though