The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, June, 1862

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The statistics given above are correct. That small number of slaveholders sustains the system of slavery, and has caused this terrible rebellion. They are, almost to a man, rebels and secessionists, and we may cover the South with armies, and keep a file of soldiers upon every plantation, and not smother this insurrection unless we break down the power of that class. Their wealth gives them their power, and their wealth is in their slaves. Free their negroes by an act of Emancipation, or Confiscation, and the rebellion will crumble to pieces in a day. Omit to do it, and it will last till doomsday.

The power of this dominant class once broken; with landed property at the South more equally divided, a new order of things will arise there. Where now, with their large plantations, not one acre in ten is tilled, a system of small farms will spring into existence, and the whole country be covered with cultivation. The six hundred thousand men who have gone there to fight our battles, will see the amazing fertility of the Southern soil—into which the seed is thrown and springs up without labor into a bountiful harvest—and many of them, if slavery is crushed out, will remain there. Thus a new element will be introduced into the South, an element that will speedily make it a loyal, prosperous, and intelligent section of the Union.

I would interfere with no one's rights, but a rebel in arms against his country has no rights; all that he has 'is confiscate.' Will the loyal people of the North submit to be ground to the earth with taxes to pay the expenditures of a war brought upon them by these Southern oligarchists, while the traitors are left in undisturbed possession of every thing, and even their slaves are exempted from taxation? It were well that our legislators should ask this question now, and not wait till it is asked of them by THE PEOPLE.