our first born drowned all the roar of battle, then reluctantly the nation began to consent to recognize the rights of humanity.

With the island of Port Royal as the base of operations, cautious expeditions were gradually pushed out in every direction. Our ever faithful friends, the colored people, often brought to headquarters information of vital importance, which aided the Union troops to ward off danger, or to strike heavy blows with safety. At one time they informed us that the rebels were blocking Coosaw river with stockades. A gun-boat was sent which dispersed them. A scouting party of rebels ventured upon the island. The negroes discovered them and brought the report. The rebels were driven back with the loss of six prisoners and two wounded. A planter on one of the remote islands was seated at his dinner-table when he was startled by the cannonade of an approaching gun-boat shelling the suspicious thickets. He sprang from his table, leaving everything behind him, and ordered his numerous slaves to get ready the flat-boat, to transport all across the creek to the main land. The slaves, without lifting a hand to injure the planter, or his property, just took the boats, and with shouts of joy advanced to meet those whom they recognized instinctively es their friends.

The contrabands increased so rapidly in numbers, that four buildings, each 250 feet long by 30 wide, were erected for them. The friends of the colored race in the North were very active in seeking to promote their welfare, though there were not wanting journals in the free States which assailed all these Christian endeavors with ridicule. A large school-room was prepared, and these untutored men and women, who, by the laws of a nominally Christian State, had been forbidden to learn to read, with the most touching interest flocked to the school. One day, four negroes came from distant Florida in an open boat. To reach the coast, they were compelled to cross, for several miles, an almost impassable swamp.

At this period of the war, the general voice of the North called for Emancipation, as the cheapest, the least bloody, and by far the most efficient means, of bringing the war to a close. Nothing is more certain than that, with the aid of the 400,000 true Union population of South Carolina, the hardy working class, every vestige of Secessionism might have been swept from the State in three months. An earnest proclamation and a warm welcome would have spread the tidings, from plantation to plantation, like electric fire. The energies of the whole State would have been paralyzed, as the slaveholders would have been compelled to remain at home to watch their negroes. In a fortnight, 50,000 lusty arms would have been in the patriot camp, to throw up intrenchments, to do all heavy work, to man the guns behind the ramparts. The Union whites in the State would have thus been emboldened to act, and other States would have been overawed. These, at all events, were the views of those who, weary of the carnage and misery of war, preferred to terminate them by the emancipation of the slave, rather than by the impoverishment of their fortunes and the blood of their children.

The plan of the rebels had now become generally known. In speeches and documents innumerable, the slaveholders had declared that slavery

was the true condition of society-gentlemen in the parlor, laborers in the cabin; that republicanism required that an aristocratic class should hold the wealth and the power, and that the industrial class, whatever their complexion, should be deprived of all civil and political rights. It was their avowed object to demolish our free institutions, that they might reconstruct them upon this corner-stone of slavery. Thus the whole Union was to present the aspect of two classes-aristocrats living without labor, and workingmen robbed of all the fruits of their toil. All laborers, Irish, German, Yankees, were stigmatized as "mudsills," as "greasy mechanics," who should not be permitted to learn to read or write, or to enjoy any political privileges. The warfare of the slaveholders was against freedom in every form, except for gentlemen; against free schools, a free press, a free pulpit.*

It was their boast that, having thus reconstructed the Union, upon the basis of the system of despotic and pagan Rome, they would then commence a career of conquest, until these two continents were brought under subjection to their sway. Mexico and Central America were thus to be overrun; then Cuba; then island after island of the West Indies; then South America. Such was the insane plan of these slaveholders. Never did a more Satanic plot rise in mortal minds. To many it seemed that the simplest way to demolish it all, was, as a military necessity, to abolish slavery in the United States. This, in an hour, would break the arm of the rebellion.

It would

The simple assent of the North to the secession of the slaveholders, would secure all the atrocious results which the rebels desired. leave them in possession of three-fourths of the national territory, for they demanded every slave State, including the Capital at Washington. It would surrender to them the whole territory lying south of the line, running from the north-west angle of Missouri to the Pacific. It would leave in their hands the whole Gulf coast, and all of the Atlantic coast except the line from the Delaware to the Penobscot. By a low tariff, the slaveholders would secure the commerce of the world, flood the North with smuggled goods, and drive Northern manufactures from the market. Under these adverse circumstances, the great agricultural States .of the North-West, one after another, would find it for their interest to join the Southern Confederacy; Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey would follow. New England alone would be left out, powerless; to be insulted and domineered over by this gigantic despotism, which would spread its gloom over all the interests of humanity.

History may be searched in vain for any other conspiracy so utterly selfish and oppressive, and in all its principles so enormous in its wickedness. This merciless despotisin, trampling the rights of millions in the

In December, 1860, the Hon. J. H. Hammond, once Governor and Senator of South Carolina, wrote in a private letter, "You see what 2 have often told you, that Slavery is stronger than the Union. I don't think that there is the least chance of reconstructing the Confederation on the former bases. We will have no other Union than one in which the slave power shall be largely and permanently predominant. We can be secure in no other." This is the man who, owning, it is said, 18,000 acres of land and 400 slaves, calls the free laborers of the North, "mudsills."

dust, corrupting Christianity, and dethroning a God of justice, might, perhaps, for a time, develop energies equaled only by those of demons from the bottomless pit. But all the powers of the Godhead would be arrayed against it, and, like Babylon and Sodom, it would finally be blighted by God's wrath. The conscience of the North said, "We can not be partners in this great wickedness." The scourge which fell upon the South was terrific. Yet again and again had the North occasion to feel that God's frown was upon them also. The hearts of tens of thousands were saddened by the reflection, that the nation, as represented by its Government, moved so slowly in the only path of right and of safety. Still, t was evident to faith, that God was guiding the destinies of this great people, and Christians and enlightened patriots, with submission and hopefulness, could only continue to pray, to labor, and to wait.

CHAPTER IX.

THE REBELLION IN MISSOURI.

CLAIMS OF SLAVERY IN MISSOURI.-STEPS PREPARATORY TO SECESSION IN MISSOURI.-HEROISM OF CAPT. J. H. STOKES.-MILITARY PREPARATIONS AT ST. LOUIS.-EFFORTS OF GEN. LYON.CAPTURE OF CAMP JACKSON. REIGN OF GEN. HARNEY. — OVERTURES OF JACKSON AND PRICE.-PROCLAMATION OF JACKSON.-THREATENING STATE OF AFFAIRS.-MOVEMENTS OF LYON.-BATTLE OF BOONEVILLE.-STATE OF THE COUNTRY.-HEROISM OF SIGEL-BATTLE OF CARTHAGE.

Ir is a singular circumstance, if indeed it may not be called providential, that, at the breaking out of the rebellion, the line which separated the loyal from the disloyal States, was so notably geographical. The governors of the Northern Border States were not only of undoubted loyalty, but men who had never sympathized with the previous movement of Southern politicians, in behalf of slavery. Elected on a platform of opposition to pro-slavery propagandism, they did not need the shock of open rebellion to enlist their heartiest efforts on the side of liberty and national life. The executive, on the other hand, of the Southern Border States, with the exception of Gov. Hicks, of Maryland, were, from the beginning, warmly enlisted in the effort to break asunder the Union. Their sympathies and political affiliations were all on the side of the rebellion. Under cover of professions of a desire for peace, for neutrality, for State rights, they plotted and labored to carry their respective States into the Southern Confederacy, without regard to the wishes or interests of the people. The history of affairs in Missouri, affords one of the most striking illustrations of the dishonest and treacherous methods, which were taken by those in power to drag the people of their States into a course of action, which was as antagonistic to their desires, as it was hostile to their interests and subversive of their rights.

In the autumn of 1860, the gubernatorial chair of Missouri was filled by Claiborne F. Jackson. An unscrupulous member of the pro-slavery party, he at once entered into the treasonable plans of his associates. It was indeed evident to every unprejudiced mind, that all the interests of Missouri demanded the perpetuity of the Union. The dismemberment of the country, would have turned the trade of the West from the Mississippi River into Eastern channels, and would have abandoned St. Louis, now one of the great commercial centres of the West, merely to her own local trade. The State would also thus have been separated from the great North-west, with which, by nature, her interests and destiny are evidently linked.

The claims of slavery could not afford even an apparent reason for secession in her case. Missouri suffered all the evil effects, and secured none of the fancied benefits, of the slave system. Neither her climate nor her products called for negro labor. Her slaves were not in sufficient numbers to be efficient producers-many entire counties possessing less than a hundred, but were enough materially to mar her prosperity. Her genial clime, and majestic streams, and fertile lands, invited emigration. But because of slavery, dishonoring labor, and thwarting education, and obstructing the progress of religion, the tide of emigration recoiled and rolled back from her eastern border into Illinois, or turned northward to the less attractive State of Iowa, or overleaping the slavery-infested State, flowed on into the remoter West. In case, too, of separation, Missouri could not long have kept the few slaves then in the State. Bounded on three sides by free States, which would ever have afforded an asylum to the fugitive, and from two of which she was separated by no natural boundary of mountain or river, the prospect of freedom, so near and so accessible, would have proved too tempting to her slave population to have been resisted.

The great majority of the population of the State, influenced by such considerations, were earnestly loyal, though there was a powerful and an exceedingly active minority, who were prepared to unite their fortunes with the South. "I have been from the beginning," said Gov. Jackson, in a letter to David Walker, "in favor of prompt action on the part of the Southern States; but the majority of the people have differed with

me."

No sooner was the result of the Presidential campaign known, than the work of preparing to take Missouri out of the Union commenced. In January, 1861, the Legislature passed an act calling a convention, and providing for the election of delegates. Thus they apparently intended to submit the course of the State to the choice of the people. But this was far from being their real design. They had other plans in reserve, should they be beaten at the polls. They determined to accomplish by violence, what it might not be possible to accomplish by appeals to passion and prejudice. The event showed their sagacity. The convention proved itself largely and strongly loyal. The rebel leaders, however, did not wait to know the popular choice. They purposed at once to put the State on a war footing. With a view to this, they commenced the organization of voluntary forces of Secessionists. The troops, thus raised, they proposed to place under the almost unlimited control of the Governor, and to pay the expenses out of the State treasury-a plan subsequently put into execution.

In addition to this, they made their arrangements to seize the arsenals, and other public property of the United States, if possible, before Presi dent Lincoln should be inaugurated. Lest this course should be resisted by a popular uprising, secret military organizations were formed, pledged, at the first tap of the drum, to draw the sword and exterminate every Unionist who did not yield to this usurped power of the State authorities. In these movements the Governor was intensely active. He entered into