'In forming this government, Slavery clutched at the strength of the law; Freedom relied on the inviolable justice of the ages. They have both had, they must have, their reward. That it was and is thus, is apparent from the very clauses under which Slavery claims eminent domain in this country; they are all written as for an institution passing away; the sources of it are sealed up so far as they could be; and all the provisions for it--the crutches by which it should limp as decently as possible to the grave--were so worded that, when Slavery should be buried, no dead letter would stand in the Constitution as its epitaph. It is even so. No historian a thousand years hence could show from that instrument that a single slave was ever held under it.' ... 'Slavery now appeals to arms because Freedom, in her slow but steady progress, has left no informality--no flaw--which can be seized on to reverse the decision she has gained in any higher court.'
The style of this book is remarkable. The wealth of simile which bursts out genially and involuntarily is only paralleled by its strange variety, recalling CARLYLE in pleasant, piquant singularity. Its humor is irresistible; none the less so for being keenly satirical. We regret that our limits forbid copious extracts from these treasures, but do the more earnestly entreat the reader to buy the volume and make himself familiar with it. Whoever our Virginian may be, he is a rising star, well worth observing. We find him at times a gleaming enthusiast,--a man burning with the spirit of the war, involuntarily uttering the most thrilling passages of Scripture,--and again provoking laughter by dry humor and cutting jests. Let the reader in illustration take the following paragraphs in the same sequence in which they occur in the original work.
'"Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!" said dying Julian the apostate. The North may, _and will_, now collect the bones of her great-browed children who yielded because she said yield; the fallen pillars of her crumbled church; her children whose wounds yet smoke fresh from the state of Slavery;--and broken now upon the stone she so long refused, shall write as their epitaph.
(_The Privateer_.) 'A cry comes up to the ear of America,--a long, piercing cry of amazement and indignation,--recognizable as one which can come only when the profoundest depths of the human pocket are stirred. The privateers are at large! They have taken away my coffee, and I know not where they have laid it. They have taken my India goods with swords and staves. For my first-class ship they have cast lots!