What will they do with us?
The New York Herald informs us that the Yankee Cabinet are consulting about the proper mode of treating the conquered Southern rebels. Part of them are in favor of granting an amnesty to all but the civil and military leaders, and prospective emancipation of the Southern slaves; others for extreme punishment and immediate abolition. All of them, however, are united on counting the chickens before they are hatched, and cooking the fish before they catch him.We are not informed whether our own Cabinet are consulting about the proper disposition to be made of the Yankee nation. Possibly we may exempt their military and civil leaders from punishment, as they have had little else for the last two years. If they will come to terms at an early day we may grant an amnesty to the rank and file, on condition that they never show their faces again, in peace or war, within the borders of Dixie. The white slaves of the North must be at once emancipated. For this purpose our Government might deem it proper to propose to all deserters of foreign birth from the Yankee conscription work enough to support them and their families on this side the line. As soon as the men dragooned into the Federal ranks reach the South, we should offer every inducement and facility to them to quit their detested bondage.
The New York Herald indulges the delightful idea that, after the rebellion is crushed, the united armies of North and South will cooperate to whip out England and France from every vestige of foothold upon this continent. England and France must be blind indeed if such developments as these do not startle them from their suicidal neutrality. But the Herald can scarcely imagine that the present war, whatever its result, will facilitate such an enterprise. If the South is conquered, it will be because its fighting population has been exterminated. In that event nobody will be left to fight England or France. If the South succeeds she will have no despotism to embroil herself on Northern account with any nation of the earth. In any event that would heartily sympathize with any nation within would make war upon the North. Of the cannot have her own independence, this would infinitely prefer being a French of British province to coming under Yankee destitution. The Herald may rest satisfied that Mayor the South approaches subjugation as as that journal imagines she is at this payment, she will make her own choice of masters.
