The conspirators of the South read in the election of Mr. Lincoln, a declaration that the Democratic party had been prostrated, if not finally destroyed, by the selfish intrigues and corruptions of its leaders; they read, too, that the vicious, emaciated, and spavined hobby of the slavery agitation, on which they had so often rode into power, could no longer carry them beyond a given geographical line of our territory, and that in truth this factious and treasonable agitation, on which so many of them had grown great by debauching and de

outrages which had been borne until endurance | run the chances of sharing with others the honwas no longer possible. And yet no conclu- ors of the whole. sion could be further from the truth than this. The Government of the United States has been faithful to all its constitutional obligations. For eighty years it has maintained the national honor at home and abroad, and by its prowess, its wisdom, and its justice, has given to the title of an American citizen an elevation among the nations of the earth which the citizens of no republic have enjoyed since Rome was mistress of the world. Under its administration the national domain has stretched away to the Pacific, and that constellation which announced our birth as a people, has expanded from thir-nationalizing the mind of a people naturally teen to thirty-four stars, all, until recently, moving undisturbed and undimmed in their orbs of light and grandeur. The rights of no States have been invaded; no man's property has been despoiled, no man's liberty abridged, no man's life oppressively jeopardized by the action of this Government. Under its benign influences the rills of public and private prosperity have swelled into rivulets, and from rivulets into rivers ever brimming in their fulness, and everywhere, and at all periods of its history its ministrations have fallen as gently on the people of the United States as do the dews of a summer's night on the flowers and grass of the gardens and fields.

generous and patriotic, had run its course, and hence, that from the national disgust for this demagoguing, and from the inexorable law of population, the time had come when all those who had no other political capital than this, would have to prepare for retirement to private life, so far at least as the highest offices of the country were concerned. Under the influence of these grim discouragements, they resolved to consummate at once-what our political history shows to have been a long cherished purpose-the dismemberment of the Government. They said to themselves: "Since we can no longer monopolize the great offices of the Republic as we have been accustomed to do, we will destroy it and build upon its ruins an empire that shall be all our own, and whose spoils neither the North, nor the East, nor the West shall share with us." Deplorable and humiliating as this certainly is, it is but a rehearsal of the sad, sad story of the past. We had, indeed, supposed that under our Christian civil

Whence, then, this revolutionary outbreak? Whence the secret spring of this gigantic conspiracy, which, like some huge boa, had completely coiled itself around the limbs and body of the republic, before a single hand was lifted to resist it? Strange, and indeed startling, as the announcement must appear when it falls on the ears of the next generation, the nationalization we had reached a point in human progtragedy, in whose shadow we stand to-night, has come upon us because, in November last, John C. Breckinridge was not elected President of the United States, and Abraham Lincoln was. This is the whole story. And I would pray now to know, on what John C. Breckinridge fed that he has grown so great, that a republic founded by Washington and cemented by the best blood that has ever coursed in human veins, is to be overthrown because, forsooth, he cannot be its President? Had he been chosen, we well know that we should not have heard of this rebellion, for the lever with which it is being moved would have been wanting to the hands of the conspirators. Even after his defeat, could it have been guaranteed, beyond all peradventure, that Jeff. Davis, or some other kindred spirit, would be the successor of Mr. Lincoln, I presume we hazard nothing in assuming that this atrocious movement against the Government would not have been set on foot. So much for the principle involved in it. This great crime, then, with which we are grappling, sprang from that "sin by which the angels fell -an unmastered and profligate ambition-an ambition that "would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven" that would rather rule supremely over a shattered fragment of the republic than

ress, when a Republic could exist without having its life sought by its own offspring; but the Catilines of the South have proved that we were mistaken. Let no man imagine that, because this rebellion has been made by men renowned in our civil and military history, it is, therefore, the less guilty or the less courageously to be resisted. It is precisely this class of men who have subverted the best governments that have ever existed. The purest spirits that have lived in the tide of times, the noblest institutions that have arisen to bless our race, have found among those in whom they had most confided, and whom they had most honored, men wicked enough, either secretly to betray them unto death, or openly to seek their overthrow by lawless violence. The Republic of England had its Monk; the Republic of France had its Bonaparte; the Republic of Rome had its Cæsar and its Catiline, and the Saviour of the world had his Judas Iscariot. It cannot be necessary that I should declare to you, for yon know them well, who they are whose parricidal swords are now unsheathed against the Republic of the United States. Their names are inscribed upon a scroll of infamy that can never perish. The most distinguished of them were educated by the

charity of the Government on which they are | for blood, the sword of civil war. And this is now making war. For long years they were fed the Pandemonium which some would have from its table, and clothed from its wardrobe, transferred to Kentucky! and had their brows garlanded by its honors. They are the ungrateful sons of a fond mother, who dandled them upon her knee,, who lavished upon them the gushing love of her noble and devoted nature, and who nurtured them from the very bosom of her life; and now, in the frenzied excesses of a licentious and baffled ambition, they are stabbing at that bosom with the ferocity with which the tiger springs upon his prey. The President of the United States is heroically and patriotically struggling to baffle the machinations of these most wicked men. I have unbounded gratification in knowing that he has the courage to look traitors in the face, and that, in discharging the duties of his great office, he takes no counsel of his fears. He is entitled to the zealous support of the whole country, and may I not add without offence, that he will receive the support of all who justly appreciate the boundless blessings of our free institutions?

But I am not here to discuss this proposition to-night. I wish solemnly to declare before you and the world, that I am for this Union without conditions, one and indivisible, now and forever. I am for its preservation at any and every cost of blood and treasure against all its assailants. I know no neutrality between my country and its foes, whether they be foreign or domestic; no neutrality between that glorious flag which now floats over us, and the ingrates and traitors who would trample it in the dust. My prayer is for victory, complete, enduring, and overwhelming, to the armies of the republic over all its enemies. I am against any and every compromise that may be proposed to be made under the guns of the rebels, while, at the same time, I am decidedly in favor of affording every reasonable guarantee for the safety of Southern institutions, which the honest convictions of the people-not the conspirators of the South may demand, whenever they shall lay down their arms, but not until then. The arbitrament of the sword has been defiantly thrust into the face of the Government and country, and there is no honorable escape from it. All guarantees and all attempts at

If this rebellion succeeds, it will involve necessarily the destruction of our nationality, the division of our territory, the permanent disruption of the Republic. It must rapidly dry up the sources of our material prosperity, and year by year we shall grow more and more impov-adjustment by amendments to the Constitution, erished, more and more revolutionary, enfeebled, and debased. Each returning election will bring with it grounds for new civil conmotions, and traitors, prepared to strike at the country that has rejected their claims to power, will spring up on every side. Disunion once begun will go on and on indefinitely, and under the influence of the fatal doctrine of secession, not only will States secede from States, but counties will secede from States also, and towns and cities from counties, until universal anarchy will be consummated in each individual who can make good his position by force of arms, claiming the right to defy the power of the Government. Thus we should have brought back to us the days of the robber barons with their moated castles and marauding retainers. This doctrine when analyzed is simply a declaration that no physical force shall ever be employed in executing the laws or upholding the Government-and a Government into whose practical administration such a principle has been introduced, could no more continue to exist than a man could live with an angered cobra in his bosom. If you would know what are the legitimate fruits of secession, look at Virginia and Tennessee, which have so lately given themselves up to the embraces of this monster. There the schools are deserted; the courts of justice closed; public and private credit destroyed; commerce annihilated; debts repudiated; confiscations and spoliations everywhere prevailing; every cheek blanched with fear, and every heart frozen with despair; and all over that desolated land the hand of infuriated passion and crime is waving, with a vulture's scream

are now scornfully rejected, and the leaders of the rebellion openly proclaim that they are fighting for their independence. In this contemptuous rejection of guarantees, and in this avowal of the objects of the rebellion now so audaciously made, we have a complete exposure of that fraud which, through the slavery agitation, has been practised upon the public credulity for the last fifteen or twenty years. In the light of this revelation, we feel as one awakened from the suffocating tortures of a nightmare, and realize what a baseless dream our apprehensions have been, and of what a traitorous swindle we have been made the victims. They are fighting for their independence! Independence of what? Independence of those laws which they themselves have aided in enacting; independence of that Constitution which their fathers framed and to which they are parties, and subject by inheritance; independence of that beneficent Government on whose treasury and honors they have grown strong and illustrious. When a man commits a robbery on the highway, or a murder in the dark, he thereby declares his independence of the laws under which he lives, and of the society of which he is a member. Should he, when arraigned, avow and justify the offence, he thereby becoines the advocate of the independence he has thus declared; and, if he resists, by force of arms, the officer, when dragging him to the prison, the penitentiary, or the gallows, he is thereby fighting for the independence he has thus declared and advocated; and such is the condition of the conspirators of the South at this moment. It is no longer

a question of Southern rights-which have never been violated-nor of the security of Southern institutions, which we know perfectly well have never been interfered with by the General Government, but it is purely with us a question of national existence. In meeting this terrible issue which rebellion has made up with the loyal men of the country, we stand upon ground infinitely above all party lines and party platforms-ground as sublime as that on which our fathers stood when they fought the battles of the Revolution. I am for throwing into the contest thus forced upon us all the material and moral resources and energies of the nation, in order that the struggle may be brief and as little sanguinary as possible. It is hoped that we shall soon see in the field half a million of patriotic volunteers, marching in columns which will be perfectly irresistible, and, borne in their hands-for no purpose of conquest or subjugation, but of protection only -we may expect within nine months to see the Stars and Stripes floating in every Southern breeze, and hear going up, wild as the storm, the exultant shout of that emancipated people over their deliverance from the revolutionary terror and despotism by which they are now tormented and oppressed. The war, conducted on such a scale, will not cost exceeding four or five hundred millions of dollars; and none need be startled at the vastness of this expenditure. The debt thus created will press but slightly upon us; it will be paid and gladly paid by posterity, who will make the best bargain which has been made since the world began, if they can secure to themselves, in its integrity and blessings, such a Government as this, at such a cost. But, if in this anticipation we are doomed to disappointment; if the people of the United States have already become so degenerate-may I not say so craven-in the presence of their foes as to surrender up this Republic to be dismembered and subverted by the traitors who have reared the standard of revolt against it, then, I trust, the volume of American history will be closed and sealed up forever, and that those who shall survive this national humiliation will take unto themselves some other name,- -sorne name baving no relation to the past, no relation to our great ancestors, no relation to those monuments and battle-fields which commemorate alike their heroism, their loyalty, and their glory.

neighbor of his forts, his arsenals, his arms, his
munitions of war, his hospital stores, or any
thing that is his. Indeed, so impressed are we
with the obligations of this law, that we would
no more think of plundering from our neighbor
half a million of dollars because found in his
unprotected mints, than we would think of
filching a purse from his pocket in a crowded
thoroughfare. Write us down, therefore, "sub-
missionists." Again, the law says,
"Thou
shalt not swear falsely; " we submit to this law,
and while in the civil or military service of the
country, with an oath to support the Constitu-
tion of the United States resting upon our con-
sciences, we would not for any earthly consid-
eration engage in the formation or execution of
a conspiracy to subvert that very Constitution
and with it the Government to which it has
given birth. Write us down, therefore, again,
"submissionists." Yet again, when a President
has been elected in strict accordance with the
form and spirit of the Constitution, and has
been regularly installed into office, and is hon-
estly striving to discharge his duty by snatch-
ing the republic from the jaws of a gigantic
treason which threatens to crush it, we care not
what his name may or may not be, or what the
designation of his political party, or what the
platform on which he stood during the presi-
dential canvass; we believe we fulfil in the
sight of earth and heaven our highest obliga-
tions to our country, in giving to him an ear-
nest and loyal support in the struggle in which
he is engaged.

Nor are we at all disturbed by the flippant taunt that, in thus submitting to the authority of our Government, we are necessarily cowards. We know whence this taunt comes, and we estimate it at its true value. We hold that there is a higher courage in the performance of duty than in the commission of crime. The tiger of the jungle and the cannibal of the South Sea Islands have that courage in which the revolutionists of the day make their especial boast; the angels of God and the spirits of just men made perfect have had, and have that courage which submits to the law. Lucifer was a non-submissionist, and the first secessionist of whom history has given us any account, and the chains which he wears fitly express the fate due to all who openly defy the laws of their Creator and of their country. He rebelled because the Almighty would not yield But with the curled lip of scorn we are told to him the throne of heaven. The principle of by the disunionists that, in thus supporting a the Southern rebellion is the same. Indeed, in Republican Administration in its endeavors to this submission to the laws is found the chief uphold the Constitution and the laws, we are distinction between good men and devils. A "submissionists," and when they have pro- good man obeys the laws of truth, of honesty, nounced this word, they suppose they have of morality, and all those laws which have imputed to us the sum of all human abasement. been enacted by competent authority for the Well, let it be confessed, we are " submission-government and protection of the country in ists," and weak and spiritless as it may be deemed by some, we glory in the position we occupy. For example, the law says, "Thou shalt not steal; "2 we would submit to this law, and would not for the world's worth rob our

which he lives; a devil obeys only his own ferocious and profligate passions. The principle on which this rebellion proceeds, that laws have in themselves no sanctions, no binding force upon the conscience, and that every man,