The Continental Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 3, March 1862 | Page 4

civil and military, in North Alabama, a
counter-revolution in that State would not be difficult of
accomplishment.[B]
It will thus be seen, that, in the South itself, there exists a tremendous
groundwork of aid to the North, and of weakness to secession. The love
of this region for the Union, and its local hatred for planterdom with its
arrogance towards free labor, is no chimera; nor do we make the wish
the father to the thought when we assert that a Union victory would
light up a flame of counter-revolution which would in time, with
Northern aid, crush out the foul rebellion. And relying on this fact, we
grow confident and exultant. If Europe will only let us alone--if
England will refrain from stretching out a helping hand to that
slaveocracy for which she has suddenly developed such a strange and
unnatural love, we may yet be, at no distant day, great, powerful, and
far more united than ever.
But we have, in addition to all these districts of Alleghania, a vast
reserve in Texas--that Texas which is now more than half cultivated by
free labor, and which is amply capable of producing six times as much
cotton as is now raised in the entire South. An armed occupation of
Texas, a copious stream of emigration thither, to be encouraged by very
liberal grants to settlers, and a speedy completion of its railroads,
would be an offset to secession, well worth of itself all that the war has
cost. With Texas in our power, with Cumberland Gap firmly held, with
the negroes in South Carolina fairly disorganized from slavery, with
free Yankee colonies in the Palmetto State, with New Orleans taken--a
blockade without and complete financial disorder within, what more

could we desire as a basis to secure thorough reëstablishment of power?
Here our superiority to the South in possessing not only a navy, but,
what is of far more importance, a vast merchant marine containing all
the elements necessary to form a navy of unparalleled power, appears
in clearest light, giving us cause for much congratulation. To effect all
this, time is required. Let those who fret, look over the map of a
hemisphere--let them reflect on the condition to which Southern
perfidy and theft had reduced us ere the war begun, and then let them
moderate their cries. It will all be done; but the programme is a
tremendous one, and the future of the most glorious country on earth
requires that it shall be done thoroughly, and that no risks shall be
taken.
But, beyond all the aid which is to be expected from a
counter-revolution in the South, to be drawn from the 'Alleghania'
region, there is one of vast importance, insisted upon in a series of
articles published during the past year in the New York Knickerbocker
Magazine, and which may be appropriately reconsidered in this
connection. Should the government of the United States, by one or
more victories, obtain even a temporary sway over the South, it will
only rest with itself to produce a powerful counter-revolution even in
those districts which are blackest with slavery. Let it, when the time
shall seem fit,--and we urge no undue haste, and no premature
meddling with the present plans or programme of those in
power,--simply proclaim Emancipation, offering to pay all loyal men
for their slaves according to a certain rate. The proportion of Union
men who will then start into life, even in South Carolina, will be,
doubtless, enormous. It may be objected that many of these will merely
profess Union sentiments for the time being. But, on the other hand,
those noted rebels who can have no hope of selling their slaves, save
indeed to the Union professors, will have small love for the latter, and
two parties can not fail to show themselves at once. Those who hope to
see the slave principle ultimately triumphant will oppose selling the
chattels; those who wish to 'realize' at once on them, owing to
temporary embarrassments, will urge it; and dissension of the most
formidable character will be at once organized,--precisely such
dissension as the Southern press has long hoped to see between the

dough-faces and patriots of the North, or between its labor and capital,
or in any other disastrous dissension.
Be it borne in mind that the price of slaves is at present greatly
depressed in the South. Those who would sell would speedily acquire
more, in the hope of a profit by selling to government. Those too who
would willingly act as brokers between those who wished to sell, but
who would not dare to openly do so, would be very numerous. Between
these and the leaders of the ultra pro-slavery party there would be bitter
feud. Let a counter-revolutionary party once succeed in holding