Mediation.
There are insuperable difficulties in the way of foreign mediation between North and South, If the Prince Napoleon has come on such a mission, he will soon discover it to be quite impracticable.
The question between the South and North does not admit of compromise.
With the
South it is a resalute and unalterable determination to be no longer associated with such a people as the
Northern.
With the
North it is an arrogant determination to prevent the separation of the
South.
There is but one mods of settling the controversy.
The South cannot recedes or compromise.
She will have independence, not only because it is hor right and her interest to possess it, but because a state of dependence would be intolerable, and longer union with the
North would be interpreted into, and would in fact be, nothing but dependence.
Besides, the
South is able to achieve her independence, and make good her case in this war. The
North cannot succeed in accomplishing its purposes; and the
South, by consenting to any mediation or compromise that does not grant absolute separation, would voluntarily relinquish a result which she has perfectly within her command.
True, it is for the interest of both parties that the war should cease; but it is not for the interest of the
South that the intercourse and amenities of friendly nations should be instituted between the two sections.
If there were a great gulf fixed between the two peoples, impassable as that which separated
Dives from
Lazarus, the
South would soon become the most prosperous and one of the most powerful nations on the earth.
The contiguity of the
North will ever exert a baneful influence upon all her interests — social, political, commercial and moral.
If to this should be added free friendly intercourse, the "universal nation" would come down upon her like the locusts of
Egypt, eating up every green thing.
They would profess such extreme Southern opinions that it would be impossible to deny to their importunity an unrestricted eligibility to all our offices of trust and emolument, especially the latter.
They would infest our high places and low, and be ever ready to betray and barter away our interests in peace, and our cause in war. If the present controversy between the two sections should be settled by mediation, the
South demanding absolute separation and distinct political existence as her
sine qua non, some compensation would have to be conceded to the
North, which could only consist of commercial concessions ruinous to our interests, and the granting of social and political privileges demoralizing to our social and political integrity.
The experiment of Republican institutions is lost at the
North, and it can only be saved at the
South by maintaining as strict a nonintercourse with the moral Seldom and political Pandemonium on our borders, as the nature of the case will permit.
We are willing to agree to the cessation of hostilities; but if any foreign mediation shall exact concessions of intercourse, and commercial and political privilege, as a bargain and stipulation, it will exact what cannot be granted without destruction to our social, political, and commercial integrity.
The case, therefore, is not one for arbitration.
The South cannot refer so grave a question as that of her independence to any arbitration, much less to that of a foreign potentate.
Did ever two litigants refer to arbitration the question of either one's slavery?--Independence is a question that cannot be referred by the
South; and that is, in fact, the only question really involved in the present contest.
The Yankee may become sick of the war, and is capable of descending from a demand of our service and fealty, to begging the privilege of peddling his wooden nutmegs and bark clocks through our country; but neither of these demands is proper for mediation, and we should be very wary of granting treaty privileges of trade.
Despairing of conquering the
South by open hostilities, they will try the artifice of the Greeks before
Troy, and attempt to introduce, by means of trade privileges, the wooden horse into our midst.
It is only some purpose of this sort that mediation can accomplish; and we should distrust and eschew such schemes, as the Trojans learned to distrust their enemies, even when bearing propended gifts.
There is also an insuperable difficulty, on the side of the
North, in the way of mediation.
The real governing power in that section is the power behind the throne, greater than the throes itself.
Lincoln may plant and
Seward may water, but it is the ignorant and easily misled Northern populace that must give their sanction before fruit can come of the labor.--Never was there on earth before a Government possessing so little of the authority of power as the wretched concern at
Washington. --Doubtless.
Lincoln and
Seward would be glad to mediate; but what do their wishes avail in opposition to the fanaticism of the
Northern populace, led by the lying
Blairs and the sanguinary
Tribune The ignorant and fickle populace must consent to mediate, or else the consent of the
Lincoln Government is nothing.
Thus, between the difficulty of obtaining an impracticable consent at the
North, and the insurmountable objection of the
South to a measure so impolitic, there seems very little chance for mediation.
