Proposed Sale of the South, Slavery and All
Among the most interesting items of news from Europe by the Asia is the report of the Independance Belje “that the Southern Commissioners have informed tho English governmentthat, in return for the recognition of the Southern confederacy, they would establish most absolute free trade for fifty years, abolish the external slave traffic, and emancipate all the blacks born after the recognition.”
We are strongly inclined to believe that Mason and Slidell were charged with that extensive discretion which would cover these propositions, and that Jeff. Davis and his confederates have placed all their hopes upon British intervention. All their other calculations failing, the conspirators who contrived this rebellion believed that Southern cotton and free trade would infallibly bring England to their rescue. The influence of these temptations upon the British government—which had been presented in every shape and form by industrious Southern emissaries—was betrayed in the indecent haste with which Lords Palmerston and Russell seized upon the Trent affair as a cause for war. But that cloud having blown over, and King Cotton and free trade having failed to silence the abolition objections of the English people to a war with the United States in support of a pro-slavery confederacy, we can readily believe that Davis and Company, as a last resort to save themselves from the penalties of unsuccessful treason, are prepared to sell our revolted States, slavery and all, for English intervention.
There is something conceded to the antislavery sentiment of England in the proposition to totally abjure the African slave trade; but the offer to make free in Secessia every child born therein, the offspring of a slave mother, after the date of the recognition by England of our so-called “Confederate States” as an independent Power, is positively sublime. It is a sweeping proposition of emancipation, but upon a plan so gradual that the present Southern generation would not feel it; and what care Davis and his ruling Confederates for the next generation, so that during the present Davis and Company are secured in the spoils and plunder, the government, the honors and emoluments of a Southern confederacy, instead of suffering the pains and penalties of defeated traitors.
From time to time, since August last, we have had, from the Charleston Mercury and other Southern oracles at home and abroad, some glimmerings of submission to a European master, or of some vital concessions in the matter of Southern slavery to England, in order to escape from the strong grasp of the “old Union.” We are not, therefore, surprised to hear of these extraordinary rebel offerings of Southern trade, Southern cotton, Southern slavery and Southern independence to England as the last chance for the disruption of the Union. But these propositions come too late. England hesitates: and while she is hesitating Lord Palmerston will get such news of the doings of our fleets and armies as will convince him that Jeff. Davis has been playing the part of an arrant impostor. This rebellion is falling to pieces. The “old Union” will be restored, and Southern slavery will be left to take its chances under the pressure of free labor and the non-intervention guarantees of the constitution of the United States. The people of the South are returning to their sober senses, and this news from the Independance Belge will be very apt to strike the last nail in the political coffin of Jeff. Davis
New York Herald, New York, NY