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Now in view of these facts, how are the Confederate Slave
States to give way to French influence and emancipate their
slaves ! Can it be supposed that the men of the South will
relax their hold upon a race, after perilling their lives, their
property, and their fortunes, to establish a Confederacy
whose " corner-stone" is the enslavement of the African
race ? Surely M. Chevalier has much to learn of the cha-
racter and purposes of the men of the South, if he thus
deludes himself. The South is not so easily moulded to the
purposes of other men, although Southern men may, for the
present, wheedle Frenchmen over a glass of wine in the
salons of France.
Establish this intermediary slave power, and its flag will
sail over the world, and re-open the foreign slave trade.
The Cotton States have clamored for the restoration of this
trade in the marts of the world, and France may yet aid
this power to re-establish this new mode of civilization. If
France wishes to enter upon this traffic, she can get cotton
in exchange for Congo negroes in any port of the South, and
in no other way could she so well secure its friendship, or
promote her own interest in the Confederate States. But if
France attempts to stand in the way of this slave power,
which has made war upon the United States for the pur-
pose of diffusing the " peculiar institution" of the South,
in other quarters of the world, then she need not think to
strengthen herself in Mexico by raising up this interme-
diary power to check the Model Republic in its more south-
erly tendency. This would not be the first time in the
world's history that the ends men aim at, would be over-
borne. The Confederate States would, when once esta-
blished, look to the withdrawal of French influence in
Mexico ; for they mean to occupy and hold the cotton lands
along the entire Mexican Gulf. France will yet compre-
hend the rights and the programme upon which this slave
interest intends to reconstruct its basis of Nationality,
should it once rise to power.
But M. Chevalier thinks the cause of the South not only
logical but equitable.
The logic of this contest is, whether a minority shall
dismember the Republic, because an election in which it
participated went against the South, and that minority. That
is the logic of this contest. The South was prepared to rebel
in 1856, had the Republicans then succeeded to power ;