secede. There is no doubt in the minds of the well-informed, that Mr. Breckinridge was sincere in these professions, and it is known that he adhered to the Union, in his heart, down to the time when war became evidently inevitable. There is reason, too, to believe that he has since bitterly regretted having abandoned the cause of his country. Secondly, the Breckinridge leaders at Baltimore arranged their programme of future operations. They were aware of the certainty of their defeat. In all probability, the republicans would come into power. That party (as the Breckinridge democrats supposed) being unused to govern, and inheriting immense and unexampled difficulties, would break down, would quarrel among themselves, would become ridiculous or offensive, and so prepare the way for the triumphant return of the democracy to power in 1865. Mr. Douglas, too, they thought, would destroy himself, as a political power, by having wantonly broken up his party. The democrats, then, would adhere to their young and popular candidate, and elect him; if not in 1864, then in 1868. Having concluded these arrangements, they separated, to meet in Washington after the election, and renew the compact, or else to change it to meet any unexpected issue of the campaign. On his return to Lowell, General Butler found himself the most unpopular man in Massachusetts. Not that Massachusetts approved the course or the character of Mr. Douglas. Not that Massachusetts was incapable of appreciating a bold and honest man, who stood in opposition to her cherished sentiments. It was because she saw one of her public men acting in conjunction with the party which seemed to her identified with that which threatened a disruption to the country if it should be fairly beaten in an election. The platform of that party was profoundly odious to her. It appeared to her, not merely erroneous, but immoral and monstrous, and she could not but feel that the northern supporters of it were guilty of a kind of subserviency that bordered upon baseness. She did not understand the series of events which would have compelled Mr. Douglas, if he had been elected, to go to unimagined lengths in quieting the apprehensions of the South. She could not, in that time of intense excitement, pause to consider, that if General Butler's course was wrong, it was, at least, disinterested and unequivocal. He was hooted in the streets of Lowell, and a public meeting, at which he was to give an account of his stewardship, was broken up by a mob. A second meeting was called. General Butler then obtained a hearing, and justified his course in a speech of extraordinary force and cogency. He characterized the Douglas ticket as “two-faced,” designed to win both sections, by deceiving both. "Hurrah for Johnson! he goes for intervention. Hurrah for Douglas! he goes for non-intervention unless the Supreme Court tells him to go the other way. Hurrah for Johnson! he goes against popular sovereignty. Hurrah for Douglas! he goes for popular sovereignty if the Supreme Court will let him! Hurrah for Johnson! he is for disunion! Hurrah for Douglas! he is for the Union." He met the charge brought against Mr. Breckinridge of sympathy with southern disunionists. "In a speech, but a day or two since at Frankfort, in the presence of his life-long friends and political opponents, who could have gainsayed the declaration if it were not true, Mr. Breckinridge proudly said :-'I am an American and a Kentuckian, who never did an act nor cherished a thought that was not full of devotion to the constitution and the Union.' Proud words, proudly spoken, and incapable of contradiction. Yet we, who support this gallant and conservative leader, are called disunionists, and charged with being untrue to democracy. By whom is this charge made? By Pierre Soulé, an avowed disunionist, in Louisiana; by John Forsyth and the Atlanta Confederacy,' in Georgia, which maintains the duty of the South to leave the Union if Lincoln is elected; and yet these same men are the foremost of the southern supporters of Douglas; by Gaulding, of Georgia, who is now stumping the state for Douglas, making the same speech that he made in the convention at Baltimore, where he argued that non-intervention meant that congress had no power to prevent the exportation of negroes from Africa, and that the slave trade was the true popular sovereignty in full expansion. "Would you believe it, fellow-citizens, this speech was applauded in the Douglas convention, and that too, by a delegate from Massachusetts, ay, and from Middlesex county. "When I left that convention, I declared that I would no longer sit where the African slave trade, made piracy and felony by the laws of my country, was openly advocated and applauded. Yet such, at the South, are the supporters of Douglas." General Butler was the Breckinridge candidate for the governorship of Massachusetts. He had been a candidate for the same office a few years before, and had received the full support of his party, about 50,000 votes. On this occasion only 6,000 of his fellow-citizens cast their votes for him; the whole number of voters being more than 170,000. CHAPTER III. MASSACHUSETTS READY. PERHAPS the commonest mistake made in commenting upon human actions, is to overrate the understanding, and underrate the moral worth of the actor. We flatter ourselves that we are very great and very bad beings; the humiliating truth seems to be, that we are rather good and extremely little. Mr. Dickens has a character in one of his novels, who was fond of giving out that he was born in a ditch, and struggled up from that lowly estate to the position of a man whose check was good for any number of thousands of pounds; but it came out at last, that he was born of "poor but respectable parents," who had given him the rudiments of education in the most ordinary and common-place way. The blustering fool could not face the homely, creditable truth of his origin, and so invented the flattering lie, that he was the castaway offspring of a stroller. A vanity of this kind is common to the race. We do not, as a general thing, purposely deceive ourselves, but it appears to be universally taken for granted, that man is a tremendous creature, capable of seeing the end from the beginning, and accustomed to form plans which contemplate and cause the actual issue. This delusion, I suppose, is nourished, by our constantly viewing the results of human ingenuity in vast accumulation. We omit to consider, that it took all the lifetime of man to build the Great Eastern, and that a new suit of Sunday clothes is the result of the severe cogitation and laboriously gathered knowledge of all the ingenious tailors that ever lived, to say nothing of the inventive weavers, curriers, and shoemakers. Hence, when a great thing has occurred, like this rebellion of the slave power against the power which alone could protect it, we are apt to imagine that it was all deliberately and deeply planned beforehand. The final history of the war, when it comes to be written, many years hence, will probably disclose that there was not much actual planning. The event was of the nature of a conflagration. There had been, indeed, for thirty years, a most diligent collection of combustible matter. Every oratorial demagogue had wildly tossed his bundle of painted sticks upon the heap, and such men as Calhoun had burrowed through the mass, and inserted some solidlooking timbers of false doctrine; and the necessities of despotism had built a wall around it, so that the fire-apparatus of outside civilization could not be brought to bear. In such circumstances, there is no great need of plan, when mere destruction is the object. A few long heads, like John Siidell, with the aid of a few madmen in Charleston, were competent to apply the requisite number of matches, and blow upon the incipient flames. It will probably appear, that those who have since beer most conspicuous in controlling the movement, were men who hung back from inaugurating it; men who would have preferred to remain in the Union, and who were as much" carried away" by the rush of events, as the planters of North Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana, are known to have been. In December, 1860, Mr. Lincoln having been elected, and congress met, General Butler went to Washington, according to the agreement at Baltimore, in June, to confer with democratic leaders upon the future course of the party. South Carolina had gone through the form of seceding from the Union, and her three commissioners were at the capital, to present to the president the ordinance of secession, and negotiate the terms of separation. Regarding themselves in the light of ambassadors, and expecting a long negotiation, they had taken a house, which served as the headquarters of the malcontents. Excitement and apprehension pervaded all circles. General Butler, in visiting his southern friends, found that most of them considered secession a fact accomplished, nothing remaining but to arrange the details. Mr. Breckinridge, however, still steadfast to his pledges, indignant, sorrowful, was using his influence to bring about a convention of the border states, which should stand between the two hostile bodies, and compel both to make the concessions supposed to be necessary for the preservation of the Union. By day and night, he strove to stem the torrent of disaffection, and bring the men of the South to reason. He strove in vain. The movement which he endeavored to effect was defeated by Virginians, particularly by Mason and Hunter. Finding his plan impossible, he went about Washington, pale and haggard, the picture of despair, and sought relief, it is said, where despairing southern men are too apt to seek it, in the whisky bottle. "What does all this mean?" asked General Butler, of an old southern democrat, a few hours after his arrival in Washington. "It means simply what it appears to mean. The Union is dead. The experiment is finished. The attempt of two communities, having no interest in common, abhorring one another, to make believe that they are one nation, has ceased for ever. sound, homogeneous government, with no We shall have room for our northern friends. "Have you counted the cost? Do you really think you can break up this Union? Do you think so yourself?" "I do." We shall establish a discordant elements. Come with us." "You are prepared, then, for civil war? You mean to bring this thing to the issue of arms?" "Oh, there will be no war. The North won't fight." "The North can't fight. We have friends enough at the North to prevent it." "You have friends at the North as long as you remain true to the constitution. But let me tell you, that the moment it is seen that you mean to break up the country, the North is a unit against you. I can answer, at least, for Massachusetts. She is good for ten thousand men to march, at once, against armed secession." "Massachusetts is not such a fool. If your state should send ten thousand men to preserve the Union against southern secession, she will have to fight twice ten thousand of her own citizens at home who will oppose the policy." "No, sir; when we come from Massachusetts we shall not leave a single traitor behind, unless he is hanging on a tree." |