In publishing this study at the present time, I expose myself to the blame of prudent men. I shall be told that I ought to have waited.

To have waited for what? Until there shall be no more great questions in Europe to dispute our attention with the American question? Or until the American question has shaped itself, and we are able to know clearly what interests it will serve, in what consequences it will end?

I am not sorry, I confess, to applaud duty before it is recommended by success. When success shall have come, men eager to celebrate it will not be wanting, and I shall leave to them the care of demonstrating then that the North has been in the right, that it has saved the United States.

To construct the philosophy of events after they have passed is very interesting, without doubt, but the work to be accomplished to-day is far more serious. The point in question is to sustain our friends when they are in need of us; when their battle, far from being won, is scarcely begun; the point in question is to give our support—the very considerable support of European opinion—at the time when it can be of service; the point in question is to assume our small share of responsibility in one of the gravest conflicts of this age.

Let us enlist; for the Slave States, on their part, are losing no time. They have profited well, I must admit, by the advantages assured to them by the complicity of the ministers of Mr. Buchanan. In the face of the inevitable indecision of a new government, around which care had been taken to accumulate in advance every impossibility of acting, the decided bearing of the extreme South, its airs of audacity and defiance have had a certain Éclat and a certain success. Already its partisans raise their heads; they dare speak in its favor among us; they insult free trade, by transforming it into an argument destined to serve the interests of slavery. And shall we remain mute? Shall we listen to the counsels of that false wisdom that always comes too late, so much does it fear to declare itself too early? Shall we not feel impelled to show in all its true light the sacred cause of liberty? Ah! I declare that the blood boils in my veins; I have hastened and would gladly have hastened still more. Circumstances independent of my will alone have retarded a publication prepared more than a month ago.

ORANGE, March 19, 1861.

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION.
I.—AMERICAN SLAVERY
II.—WHERE THE NATION WAS DRIFTING BEFORE THE ELECTION OF MR. LINCOLN.
III.—WHAT THE ELECTION OF MR. LINCOLN SIGNIFIES.
IV.—WHAT WE ARE TO THINK OF THE UNITED STATES.
V.—THE CHURCHES AND SLAVERY.
VI.—THE GOSPEL AND SLAVERY.
VII.—THE PRESENT CRISIS.
VIII.—PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS.
IX.—COEXISTENCE OF THE TWO RACES AFTER EMANCIPATION.
X.—THE PRESENT CRISIS WILL REGENERATE THE INSTITUTIONS OF THE
UNITED STATES.
CONCLUSION.