The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I | Page 2

151
The Unkind Word, 690
The War a Contest for Ideas. By Henry Everett Russell, 578
The Wild Azalea. By E. W. C., 596
The Young Author's Dream. By Edwin R. Johnson, 395
Thistle-Down. By Frances Lamartine, 318
Thomas De Quincey and His Writings. By L. W. Spring, 650
Thomas Jefferson, as Seen in the Light of 1863. By J. Sheldon, 129
Thought. By Virginia Vaughan, 577
Union Not to be Maintained by Force. By Hon. Frederick P. Stanton,
73
Was He Successful? By Richard B. Kimball, 80, 221, 341, 445

THE

CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:
DEVOTED TO
LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY.
VOL. V.--JANUARY, 1864.--No. I.

RETROSPECTIVE.
Time makes many dark things clear, and often in a wonderfully short
and decisive way. So we said hopefully two years and more ago in
regard to one of the unsolved problems which then pressed on the
minds of thoughtful men--how, namely, it was to fare with slavery in
the progress and sequel of the war. The history of our national struggle
has illustrated the truth and justified the hope. Time has quite nearly
solved that problem and some others almost equally perplexing. The
stream of historical causes has borne the nation onward on the bosom
of its inevitable flow, until we can now almost see clear through to the
end; at any rate, we have reached a point where we can look backward
and forward with perhaps greater advantage than at any former period.
What changes of opinion have been wrought! How many doubts
resolved! How many fears dispelled! How many old prejudices and
preconceived notions have been abandoned! How many vexed
questions put at rest! How many things have safely got an established
place among accepted and almost generally acceptable facts, which
were once matters of loyal foreboding and of disloyal denunciation! No
man of good sense and loyalty now doubts the rightfulness and wisdom
of depriving the rebels of the aid derived from their slaves, and making
them an element of strength on our side; while the fact that the
enfranchised slaves make good soldiers, is put beyond question by an
amenability to military discipline and a bravery in battle not surpassed
by any troops in the world.
HAS THE WAR GONE SLOWLY?
The work of subduing the rebellion has gone slowly as compared with

the impatient demands of an indignant people at the outset; but not
slowly if you consider the vast theatre of the war, the immense extent
of the lines of military operations, and the prodigious advantages
possessed by the rebels at the beginning--partly advantages such as
always attend the first outbreak of a revolutionary conspiracy long
matured in secret against an unsuspecting and unprepared Government,
and partly the extraordinary and peculiar advantages that accrued to
them from the traitorous complicity of Buchanan's Administration,
through which the conspirators were enabled to rob the national
treasury, strip the Government of arms, and possess themselves of
national forts, arsenals, and munitions of war, before the conflict began.
NOT TOO SLOW--WHY? SLAVERY.
But either way the war has not gone too slowly with reference to its
great end--the establishment of a durable peace. If the rebellion had
been crushed at once by overwhelming force, it would have been
crushed only to break out anew. Slavery would have been left
unimpaired, and that would inevitably have entailed another conflict in
no long time. In the interest of slavery the rebels have drawn the sword;
let slavery perish by the sword. In the interest of slavery they have
attempted to overthrow the National Government and to dismember the
national domain; let slavery be overthrown to maintain the Government
and to preserve the integrity of the nation. Let the cause of the war
perish with the war. Not until slavery is extinguished can there be a
lasting peace; for not until then can the conditions of true national unity
begin to exist. What wise and good man would wish to save it from
extinction? It is as incompatible with the highest prosperity of the
South as it is with a true national union between the South and the
North. Once extinguished, there will be a thousand-fold increase in
every element of Southern welfare, economical, social, and moral; and
possibilities of national wealth and strength, greatness and glory, above
every nation on the globe, will be established. Let slavery go down. Let
us rejoice that in the progress and sequel of this war, it must and will go
down.
EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION.

Looking back, we can now see that much that was trying to the
patience of the loyal masses of the North in the early stages of the war,
has only served to make it more certain that what ought to be will be.
Time has done justice to the idiotic policy of fighting the rebellion with