Indianapolis Daily Journal, December 14, 1860

The dissolution of the American Union seems at last inevitable. Grave and patriotic counsellors who, from their position at the Federal Capital, are able to take wide survey of our vast empire, see as yet not one chance of escape from the impending calamity. Instead of the calm repose of peaceful prosperity that has hitherto marked our country, there now meets the anxious gaze nothing but uproar, confusion and incipient anarchy. It is like the spectacle of a splendid ship, freighted with the world's wealth and packed with human souls, with every inch of canvas set and her flag full high advanced at the mast-head, drifting with a deadly certainty into the mouth of the maelstrom. The comparison is feeble; for the real scene which we may soon have to contemplate is the most awful and tremendous in its consequences of any public event for two thousand years. It will be the death scene of a Government which, during its brief career of seventy years, has astounded the world by its incomparable progress in material prosperity and by the rich fruits, never before so fairly developed, of the truest liberty united with the highest civilization. The passions of men never in any revolution dealt so deadly a blow at human progress, as will be struck in the hour when the States of North America shall fall from their confederated position to the rank of petty empires.

There is one reflection, however, not altogether devoid of satisfaction to those who, like ourselves, believe that slavery is a moral and political evil. The dissolution of the American Union seals the doom of American slavery. As an abstract of philosophical truth, a grander idea never was uttered than that of Seward's "irrepressible conflict."—There is an irrepressible conflict; not of States or of armed men—not of John Brown forays or Montgomery incursions; for these are attacks upon slavery where it exists by municipal law and has a right to exist. But there is an irrepressible conflict of principle, and in the violation of the divine purposes which are being worked out among men, through the cycles of time, either slavery must go down and freedom prevail, or freedom must expire and slavery reign triumphant and universal.

The strife between freedom and slavery on this continent is most interesting to us certainly; but it is but a fragment of the great conflict of ages, the ever raging war between those things which are just, virtuous, useful and good, and those which are hurtful and vicious and wrong. And every man's judgment as to the final result resolves itself, in the last analysis, simply into a belief or disbelief in a ruler of the universe who is benevolent to devise and Almighty to execute his government of the world. We would protect, and have always advocated the protection of slavery where it exists; believing always, however, that in some way or, other it would work its own extinction. But not content to let slavery have a peaceful existence and perhaps, at last, a fearful death, the secessions will precipitate the final result of the irrepressible conflict, they will hurry the plan of Providence and hasten the downfall of American slavery at least one hundred years.

If the Cotton States secede and erect a Southern Confederacy, slavery will be the essence of the government. When theyy come to form commercial treaties with England, two considerations will influence that great Empire in the slave States. In the first place there is in the English Government a deep-seated hostility to slavery on humanitarian grounds. They are all Abolitionists, and honest, active ones, from Queen Victoria down to the lowest man in the realm. Further than this, it is the far-sighted policy of England to kill the culture of cotton in this country, and encourage its production in Africa and her own colonies. As a supposed step to this end she will strive to root out American slavery. Thus, then, on both moral and selfish grounds, the resistless diplomacy of that great Empire will be instantly directed against the peculiar institution.

But more than this, the Southern Confederacy will be born a foreign nation. No more protection then, no more fugitive slave laws, no more right of transit, no more surpressing of slave insurrections by Federal troops. The real Abolitionists of the North (as different from Republicans as night from day) will swarm upon them, and for every one that is hung fifty will take his place. Moreover, they must form commercial treaties with the free Republic of the North, as well as with England; and who can doubt that our policy will co-operate with that of England to grind out slavery? How long would the abnormal institution of slavery, already effete and staggering to its grave, live when brought under the crushing effects of these great influences? The logic of events is a stern and terrible thing. The rigid syllogysms of facts make iron conclusions that must either be avoided, or will crush whoever opposes them, and to the final disappearance of American slavery, when the causes we have spoken of once begin to operate, the terrible vengeance of time points with inexorable certainty.

These are our reasons for saying that the dissolution of the Union is the doom of slavery; and this is the only good to humanity that, so far as we can see, can possibly be evolved from the downfall of our present form of government. The catastrophe may yet be averted, and Heaven grant it may; but, if it come, then it will have happened to those now living to see the ruin of the grandest social fabric of all time. The men may never be born who will rear its like again.