The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862, page 9 by Various Authors
<< Return to Title Details & Download10
ritories, and you make the Union 'as it was,' so far as the North is concerned; but will that bring back the South? No. Go still further, and make the Union more than 'it was' for them; yield them the principle of the Lemmon Case, and so allow them to call the roll of their slaves under the shadow of Bunker Hill, and to convert New-York Battery into a slave-mart for the convenience of slave-breeding Virginia and the slave-buying Gulf States; and will these concessions lead the rebels to lay down their arms and return into the Union? No. They will never lay down their arms until they are conquered by overwhelming military force. They will never be in the Union until subjugated. And I think the rebellion will never be extinguished without extinguishing slavery. Then, and not before, will the conditions begin to exist of lasting peace and true union between the South and the North. Then, and not before, will there be genuine prosperity, a true social order, and a decent civilization in the South.
And since 'the Union as it was' is a thing that never can be again, it is not worth while to concern ourselves overmuch about 'the Constitution as it is,' so far as those who raise the outcry for it have any determinate meaning in their cry. For here, too, the reëstablishment of the political power of slavery is the only point in their view.
The Constitution--in its great substance, in its essential principles, in the general frame of government it establishes, in its organization of powers, in its main provisions, and in most of its details--is an instrument which probably few wise and patriotic Americans would care to see altered, and none would wish to see subverted. But the constitutions of all governments, written or unwritten, (and each sort has its special advantages and disadvantages,) are more or less subject to change--must change and should change--with the progress of society. The Constitution of the United States provides for its own amendment by the people by whom