subsequently be added. And then these forty-two men chose Jefferson Davis, President, and Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy. In all the Southern States there were large numbers opposed to all these measures of revolt, and in some of the States there were, undoubtedly, a decided majority; but the leading slaveholders had got the power entirely in their hands, and all opposition was overawed. On the 18th, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated President at Montgomery.

The ample preparation the rebels had made for war was divulged in the following words, incautiously uttered, immediately after the inauguration, by a member of the Military Committee:

"My colleague, however, greatly errs, when he states we are unprepared for war, and have no arms, and I am unwilling to let the assertion go undenied. Sir, we have arms, and in abundance, though no armories. Every State has amply provided itself to meet any emergency that may arise, and is daily purchasing and receiving cannon, mortars, shells, and other engines of destruction, with which to overwhelm the dastard adversary. Organized armies now exist in all the States, commanded by officers brave, accomplished, and experienced; and even should war occur in twenty days, I feel confident that they have both the valor and the arms successfully to resist any force whatever. Let the issue come, I fear not the result."

These rebels, accustomed to be obeyed, at that time really supposed that the United States, as a body, would repudiate their old Constitution, and adopt in its stead the new and slaveholding Constitution, formed by half a dozen slaveholders-that they would eject President Lincoln contemptuously from office, and accept Jefferson Davis, and that the new government would march, with floating banners, to take possession of Washington, and that thus the revolution would be peacefully accomplished. They had made such ample preparation for war, that they thought that the freemen of the North would not venture to strike a blow for liberty.

These forty-two delegates, without the slightest misgiving, undertook to revolutionize a nation of thirty millions. They deemed themselves umpires from whom there was no appeal. They framed a Constitution, adopted articles of Confederation, chose a President and Vice-President, confirmed Cabinet and Ministerial appointments, and set in operation all the machinery of what they believed would prove a powerful and perpetual government. History affords no parallel to such an audacious usurpation. The people had no voice in the organization of the government. And yet so sagaciously was the whole thing managed, that the ignorant masses at the South were led as obediently as slaves on the plantations. Those who ventured to utter the slightest murmurs were instantly silenced with the most inexorable cruelty. Fidelity to history compels us to record the following well-authenticated facts, in illustration of the Reign of Terror, by which all patriotism at the South was subjugated. It is stated in the Richmond Whig, of March 16, 1861:

"It is a melancholy fact, that a larger amount of mo. violence has been developed in Virginia, since this secession movement began, than in

the whole previous life time of the State. There has been manifested an intolerance of spirit never before known, and what is more, such intolerance is evidently on the increase, and bodes no good to law and order, and to the peace and prosperity of the citizens of the State; and, if not checked and repressed, and that without delay, it will lead to riot, revolution, and fraternal bloodshed."

General Scott was burned in effigy by the students of Franklin College, Georgia. The Montgomery (Alabama) Mail, of February 6, commenting upon this indignity offered to one of the purest, noblest, and most patriotic men in our land, whose name will descend to posterity by the side of that of Washington, says:

"This is well. If any man deserves such infamy, it is the Lieutenant General of the (Yankee) United States. And we have a proposition to make, thereanent, to all the young men of the South, wherever scattered, at school or college, and that is, that they burn this man in effigy, all through the South, on the evening of the 4th of March next. General Scott deserves this grand infamy. It is meet that his name should descend to our posterity as a word of execration."

An Englishman, by the name of Gardiner, took a farm on shares, near Wilmington, North Carolina. All things were going on prosperously with him, and he was just ready for his spring planting, when, in February, a gang surrounded his house, arrested him, and threw him into prison as dangerous" man-one not in favor of slavery. They then sent him, his wife, and children, out of the State. Utterly penniless, he was landed in New York. All his little property and improvements passed into the hands of the rebels.

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Two Jerseymen were hung, near Charleston, without trial, on suspicion of talking to slaves about liberty. The captain of an English vessel was tarred and feathered in Savannah, for allowing a colored stevedore, who had been at work on board his vessel, to sit at the table with him.

Mr. M. A. Smith, of New Orleans, was in Eufaula, Alabama. He was arrested by the Vigilance Committee, under the charge of having said, that "Bob Toombs was a traitor, and that the secessionists were thieves and robbers." The result was, that he was taken, without any legal proceedings, to a grove, and hung. His horse and buggy, and his purse containing $356, were the spoils which fell into the hands of the victors.

Mr. Jones, of Rock Island, whose narrative is well authenticated, escaped from Louisiana under the following circumstances. He had been at work for three months, and eighty dollars were due him, when his employer charged him with being an abolitionist. He was given five dollars, and ordered to leave the State instantly. The remainder of the narrative is given in his own words.

"It would have been madness for me to have staid to collect the money due me. I had seen enough to know that any man charged with being an abolitionist was certain to be hung or thrown into the river by Lynch law, and there were my employer's two brothers to swear, as they told me they would, that I was an abolitionist. Not very long before I left, a planter had been robbed and murdered on the highway; and there came along on

the levee where we were working a crowd of about forty ruffians, all armed to the teeth, and accompanied by about forty hounds, such as are used to track runaway negroes. They searched our cabin, and inquired particu larly after any 'strangers.'. Three hours after, they returned with a white man whom they had seized. He was tied to the tail of a mule, by a halter around his neck. I afterwards heard that they took him into the timber, and half hung him to make him confess; and would have hung him outright, but for a planter who persuaded them to wait until the next day, when the real murderer was caught, and this man was released."

Mrs. Mary Crawford minutely details the murder of her husband in Terrant County, Texas, on the 17th of July, 1860. He was accused of being an abolitionist, and after being first shot down was then hung. The unhappy man was at work in the field with his two little boys, when the gang of assassins, under the name of a "Vigilance Committee," seized him, and dragged him into the woods. The boys, in their terror, ran home to their mother. Mrs. Crawford immediately started in search of her husband. She had not proceeded far before she met some of the assassins, who coolly informed her that her husband was hung. A man by the name of Turner, a lawyer and owner of forty slaves, was the ringleader of these murderers. Mrs. Crawford, in her touching narrative of this event, says:

"They took me back to the place we had been living in. My grief, my indignation, my misery, I have no words, no desire to describe. The body was not brought to me until night, and only then by the direction of Captain Dagget, a son-in-law and partner of Turner (for whom Crawford had done much work), who had been a friend to my husband, and was the only man of any influence who dared to befriend me. He had been away from home, and did not return until after the murder had been done. He denounced the act, and said they killed an innocent man.' The local Newspaper-the Fort Worth Chief-thus chronicled the tragedy:

"MAN HUNG.-On the 17th inst. was found the body of a man by the name of William H. Crawford, suspended to a pecan-tree about threequarters of a mile from town. A large number of persons visited the body during the day. At a meeting of the citizens the same evening, strong evidence was adduced proving him to have been an abolitionist. The meeting endorsed the action of the party who hung him. Below we give the verdict of the jury of inquest:

"We, the jury, find that William H. Crawford, the deceased, came to his death by being hung with a grass rope tied around his neck, and suspended from a pecan limb, by some person or persons to the jurors unknown. That he was hung on the 17th day of July, 1860, between the hours of 9 o'clock A. M. and 1 o'clock P. M. We could see no other marks of violence on the person of the deceased."

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This lawless but energetic association boasted that, in three months, they had whipped and banished, or hung, over two hundred persons, including three Methodist ministers, all of whom they stigmatized as abolition emissaries.

Mr. John Watt, a citizen of Michigan, was working near Vicksburg, Miss., in January. He was accused of uttering "dangerous sentiments," and, without any formality of accusation or trial, was dragged into the woods, and hung to the limb of a tree.

Mr. H. Turner, of New Hampshire, had, for several years, spent the winter on the plantation of Woodworth and Son, near Charleston, South Carolina. He ventured one day to say to a fellow-workman, that he was in favor of Lincoln. The Vigilance Committee soon called upon him, and asked him if he said so. He did not deny it. He was immediately arrested as an abolitionist, and taken to Charleston jail. A mob surrounded the jail, with yellings demanding him. He was placed in a bare cell, and for fourteen weeks was kept in close confinement in a dark and damp dungeon, with no food but a piece of black bread and a pint of bad water each day. He was then taken to a steamer, amidst the howlings of the mob, and being robbed of his wages due, $248, and a fine watch, was left to work his passage to New York, where he arrived utterly destitute.

No American can write such narratives about his own countrymen without extreme reluctance. But these facts must be known, or one can not understand how every voice of opposition was silenced at the South. The apparent unanimity at the South, was simply the silence enforced by the bludgeon, the lash, the halter, and the stake. IIume has remarked upon the barbarizing influence of slavery in ancient Rome. Its influence has been equally debasing in our own land. Its influence upon woman's character has been still more marked than upon the character of men. That there are noble men, and lovely and lovable women, at the South, all must gladly affirm. The writer knows many such whose memory he must ever cherish with affection. But this rebellion has proved beyond all dispute, that such are the exceptions. It is the unanimous declaration of our army, that the venom exhibited by the secession females of the South is amazing and very general. Ladies, so called, would spit upon our soldiers in the streets of Baltimore. One clergyman testifies, that a woman, a member of his church, whom he had always considered a worthy member, said to him, that "she would be perfectly willing to go to hell, if she could but shoot a Yankee first.” Another lady said, to a gentleman who related it to the writer, that she hoped yet "to sleep under a blanket, made of the scalps of Northerners."

But to this spirit there were many glorious exceptions,-men who suf fered every conceivable indignity, and women who braved the fiercest outrages of martyrdom, in love for their native land in all the beauty of its united strength, and who detested those traitors who were willing to deluge this land in blood.

We may close this revolting record with the following statement made by the Cincinnati Gazette, of May 18th:

"Nearly every day some fresh arrivals of refugees from the violence and ferocity of the new Dahomey bring to this city fresh and corroborative proofs of the condition of affairs in the rebel States. Many of these have come thence at the peril of their lives, and to avoid threatened death, have taken a hurried journey surrounded by thick dangers from

the madmen who now fill the South with deeds of violence and bloodshed.

"The people in that section seem to have been given up to a madness that is without parallel in the history of civilization-we had almost written barbarism. They are cut off from the news of the North, purposely blinded by their leaders as to the movements and real power of the Government, and in their local presses receive and swallow the most outrageous falsehoods and misstatements.

"Yesterday, one William Silliman, a person of intelligence and reliability, reached this city, returning from a year's residence in Southern Mississippi. He was one of a party who, in 1860, went from this city, and engaged in the construction of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad.

"Mr. Silliman, for several months past, has lived in Cupola, Itawamba County, one of the lower tier of counties, two hundred miles from New Orleans, and one hundred and sixty miles from Mobile. He says a more blood-thirsty community it would be difficult to conceive. Perfect terrorism prevails, and the wildest outrages are enacted openly by the rebels, who visit with their violence all suspected of loyalty, or withholding full adherence to the kingdom of Jefferson Davis. Could the full history of these outrages be written, and that truthfully, many and most of its features would be deemed incredible and monstrous, belonging to another age, and certainly to another country than our own.

"The party who is suspected of hostility, or even light sympathy, with the rebellion, is at once seized. He is fortunate if he is allowed to leave in a given time, without flogging. He is still fortunate if only a flogging is added to the order to depart. Many have been hung or shot on the spot. Mr. Silliman details five instances of the latter as having occurred among the amiable people of Itawamba County, within the past ten weeks, of several of which he was the eye-witness, a mob wreaking their vengeance upon their victims under the approval of local authorities. These five men were, Northerners, at different times assailed by the rebels. Three of them were strangers to all about them.

"On Saturday of last week a man was hung at Guntown, who refused to join the rebel army, and also refused to leave. He was taken to a tree in the outskirts of the village, and left hanging to a limb. He had a family in the place. Guntown is ten miles from Cupola. The same day, at Saltillo, a man was hung under similar circumstances, and still another at Vanona, where a traveler was seized in passing through the place. All these towns are within twenty miles' circuit of Cupola, where Mr. Silliman resided. He says that he can recall twelve instances of killing, whipping, and other outrages, thus visited upon the victims of the rebels in that vicinity, within the past two months. Many have been waiting in the hope that the storm would blow over,' but have, one after the other, been forced to submit, or seek safety in flight."

The Savannah (Georgia) Republican urged, soon after the commencement of hostilities, that all United States prisoners should be sold into slavery. "I know," says the writer, "a rich planter who would gladly take two hundred of the Yankees, on his plantation. One good black