.

.

It would perhaps add astonishment to his regret to learn that as it appears to me, that question has not been and is not a practically material one, and that any discussion of it could have no effect other than the mischievous one of dividing friends.

As yet, whatever it may become, the question is bad as the basis of a controversy--a merely pernicious abstraction.

We all agree that the seceded States, so called, are out of their proper practical relation with the Union, and that the sole object of the Government is to get them back into their proper practical relation.