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I.

THE IMMEDIATE CAUSE OF THE REBELLION.

WRITING to a friend in England, a few weeks since, we answered his anxious inquiries as to the causes of the sudden uprising of the cotton producing States, as follows:

"The idea of a Southern Confederacy is John C. Calhoun's pet bantling. He always avowed the "irrepressible conflict" doctrine between slave and free labor, and devoted all his Herculean powers to showing the slaveholding South how vastly better an independent slave confederacy would be than to pay tribute to Northern institutions. The extraordinary progress of the Free States in population has had its effect upon congressional representation, and it became evident, before the census of 1860, that, if the South would maintain its control of Congress, it must thwart the onward march of the Free States, since the Slave States really were retrogressing. The Missouri Compromise was repealed, accordingly, at their behest, in order to force slavery into Kansas, and possibly Nebraska. That repeal was the tombstone of all compromise. You know its results. Kansas is to-day a free State, and is so represented on the floors of Congress. The revulsion of sentiment, which followed upon the outrages perpetrated by the slave power, elected Mr. Lincoln, whose overwhelming majorities prove how immensely preponderating is the Free State element in this country when the actual vote is taken. This is not only indicated in the votes polled, but also in the census returns for 1860, which go to show that the North has

made gigantic strides in population and wealth, while the South has progressed but slowly, some of its older States actually having stood still or retrogressed. This fact, then, of a Northern numerical majority, which would forever hereafter give the North the controlling influence of a majority in Congress, is the cause, the sole secret, of the sudden precipitation of the Southern States from the Union; they nevermore, under a Constitution which allows the majority to rule, can control the House or even the Senate-hence secession, and a confederacy, where slavery shall rule and control its own affairs unrestrictedly."

Beyond controversy this is the sole cause of the attempted revolution-a revolution fully determined upon by the present Secessionists' leaders as far back as 1858. Jefferson Davis, the present "president" (not of the Southern people, for THEY never have been allowed to vote directly upon the question of Southern independence!) of the "Confederacy," gave utterance to the following sentiments, in a speech at Jackson, Miss., in the fall of that year :

"If an abolitionist be chosen President of the United States, you will have presented to you the question of whether you will permit the Government to pass into the hands of your avowed and implacable enemies? Without pausing for an answer, I will state my own position to be that such a result would be a species of revolution by which the purposes of the Government would be destroyed, and the observance of its mere forms entitled to no respect. In that event, in such manner as should be most expedient, I should deem it your duty TO PROVIDE FOR YOUR SAFETY OUTSIDE OF THE UNION, with those who have already shown the will, and would have acquired the power, to deprive you of your birthright, and to reduce you to worse than the colonial dependence of your fathers."

This covers the ground :—if the Free State party—the party opposed to allowing slavery a foothold in the free territories of the United States, and to granting it formal protection

THE

"WRONGS" OF THE SOUTH.

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there always termed by Southern orators "Abolitionists" -should prove their numerical majority, and, by exercising their constitutional right, should vote for and elect their President-then the Southern States must " 'provide for their safety outside the Union." Since this uprising the leaders and presses of the South have talked and written, in general terms, of their "long endured wrongs"-" the outrages of the North"-" the inconceivable injuries heaped upon Southern rights;" but, after seeking sedulously for a category of those wrongs we fail to discover anything to sustain the allegations. The whole matter resolves itself into the simple form of Davis' statement, that the election of a Republican President would justify an attempt to break up the Union.

The English public have been informed, by such of their presses as sympathize with the principle of property in man through their love of King Cotton, that there have been wrongs perpetrated by the North against the South. It is a sufficient reply to demand of them a summary of these wrongs." If correctly stated it will be somewhat as follows: 1. The Constitution gives the rule to the majority—thus depriving the Slave States of their hitherto control of the Government in consequence of the rapid increase of free population and free States.

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2. The Constitution does not contain the word Slave.

3. The Constitution does not give the slave-owner power to carry his "property" into the territories.

4. The Constitution makes the slave-trade on the high seas piracy.

5. The Northern States declare the Fugitive Slave Law unconstitutional because it gives the slave-owner power to catch his runaway “chattel” on their free soil.

6. The Northern people, being in the majority, will forever prohibit the extension of slavery into the territories, and will,

likewise, prohibit any fillibustering upon Mexico, Cuba, or Central America, to unlawfully seize more soil for slaves to cultivate.

These are the "wrongs :"-if others exist they have not yet been discovered. That we do not misstate the matter we may quote from the New York Express, which, up even to the present moment is a pro-slavery and anti-Republican organ. In answer to some strictures of "A Southerner" it said:

"The 'Stars and Stripes' have never yet been used to oppress the South. The Federal Government is not charged even with ever having done harm to the South, but on the contrary, the charge of the Republicans is, that the 'Stars and Stripes' have ever been used to serve the cause of the South, and 'the slavery of the South.' The Federal Government, until within thirty days, has been in Southern hands for years and years. General Pierce was the predecessor of

Mr. Buchanan, and both were Southern administrations; and under Mr. Fillmore, though a Northern man, the equitable, constitutional rights of the South were better protected than they would have been, even if General Taylor had lived. Indeed, Mr. Buchanan wrongfully used the 'Stars and Stripes' in Kansas to serve supposed Southern interests. The South has made no charge, and can make no charge, against the Federal Government as it has been administered; and 'the Stars and Stripes,' we repeat, have been, and are, Southern as well as Northern."

Here, not only the fact is conceded that the "Stars and Stripes" have never been used to oppress the South, but the further fact stands confessed that the Government long has been in Southern hands, and is only abandoned when it can not longer be controlled by Southern interests and slavery propagandists. The New York Herald, an organ of the divine right of slave-owners to their property and of their equal rights under the Constitution, stands appalled at the unspeakable crime of the Secessionists. It says:—

"Our existing Southern rebellion is without a precedent or a parallel in the history of mankind. In its causes, in the materials

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