over with the scrawls of horror or fear. I let the light of nobler thoughts fall upon his departure, and bless God that there is some argument of consolation in the matter and manner of his going, as there was in the matter and manner of his staying. This blow was but the expiring rebellion. As a miniature gives all the form and features of its subject, so, epitomized in this foul act, we find the whole nature and disposition of slavery. It begins in a wanton destruction of all human rights, and in a desecration of all the sanctities of heart and home; and it is the universal enemy of mankind, and of God, who made man. It can be maintained only at the sacrifice of every right and moral feeling in its abettors and upholders. I deride the man that points me to any man bred amid slavery, believing in it, and willingly practicing it, and tells me that he is a man. I shall find saints in perdition sooner than I shall find true manhood under the influences of so accursed a system as this. It is a two-edged sword, cutting both ways, violently destroying manhood in the oppressor. The problem is solved, the demonstration is completed, in our land. Slavery wastes its victims; and it destroys the masters. It destroys public morality, and the possibility of it. It corrupts manhood in its very centre and elements. Communities in which it exists are

not to be trusted. They are rotten. Nor can you find timber grown in this accursed soil of iniquity that is fit to build our ship of state, or lay the foundation of our households. The patriotism that grows up under this blight, when put to proof, is selfish and brittle; and he that leans upon it shall be pierced. The honor that grows up in the midst of slavery is not honor, but a bastard quality that usurps the place of its better, only to disgrace the name of honor. And, as long as there is conscience, or reason, or Christianity, the honor that slavery begets will be a bye-word and a hissing. The whole moral nature of men reared to familiarity and connivance with slavery is death-smitten. The needless rebellion; the treachery of its leaders to oaths and solemn trusts; their violation of the commonest principles of fidelity, sitting in senates, in councils, in places of public confidence, only to betray and to destroy; the long, general and unparalleled cruelty to prisoners, without provocation, and utterly without excuse: the unreasoning malignity and fierceness-these all mark the symptoms of that disease of slavery which is a deadly poison to soul and body.

I do not say that there are not single natures, here and there, scattered through the vast wilderness which is covered with this poisonous vine, who escape the poison. There are, but

they are not to be found among the men that believe in it, and that have been moulded by it. They are the exceptions. Slavery is itself barbarity. That nation which cherishes it is barbarous; and no outward tinsel or glitter can redeem it from the charge of barbarism. And it was fit that its expiring blow should be such as to take away from men the last forbearance, the last pity, and fire the soul with an invincible determination that the breeding-ground of such mischiefs and monsters shall be utterly and forever destroyed. We needed not that he should put on paper that he believed in slavery, who, with treason, with murder, with cruelty infernal, hovered around that majestic man to destroy his life. He was himself but the long sting with which slavery struck at liberty; and he carried the poison that belonged to slavery. And so long as this nation lasts, it will never be forgotten that we have had one martyred Presidentnever! Never, while time lasts, while heaven lasts, while hell rocks and groans, will it be forgotten that slavery, by its minions, slew him, and, in slaying him, made manifest its whole nature and tendency.

This blow was aimed at the life of the government and of the nation. Lincoln was slain; America was meant. The man was cast down; the government was smitten at. The President

was killed: it was national life, breathing freedom, and meaning beneficence, that was sought.

He, the man of Illinois, the private man, divested of robes and the insignia of authority, representing nothing but his personal self, might have been hated; but it was not that that ever would have called forth the murderer's blow. It was because he stood in the place of government, representing government, and a government that represented right and liberty, that he was singled out.

This then is a crime against universal government. It is not a blow at the foundations of our government, more than at the foundations of the English Government, of the French Government, of every compacted and well-organized government. It was a crime against mankind. The whole world will repudiate and stigmatize it as a deed without a shade of redeeming light. For this was not the oppressed, goaded to extremity, turning on his oppressor. Not the shadow of a cloud, even, has rested on the South, of wrong; and they knew it right well.

In a council held in the City of Charleston, just preceding the attack on Fort Sumter, two commissioners were appointed to go to Washington; one on the part of the army from Fort Sumter, and one on the part of the Confederates. The lieutenant that was designated to go for

us said it seemed to him that it would be of little use for him to go, as his opinion was immovably fixed in favor of maintaining the Government in whose service he was employed. Then Governor Pickens took him aside, detaining, for an hour and a half, the railroad train that was to convey them on their errand. He opened to him the whole plan and secret of the Southern conspiracy, and said to him, distinctly and repeatedly (for it was needful, he said, to lay aside disguises), that the South had never been wronged, and that all their pretences of grievances in the matter of tariffs, or anything else, were invalid. "But," said he, "we must carry the people with us; and we allege these things, as all statesmen do many things that they do not believe, because they are the only instruments by which the people can be managed." He then and there declared that the two sections of country were so antagonistic in ideas and policies that they could not live together, that it was foreordained that Northern and Southern men must keep apart on account of differences in ideas and policies, and that all the pretences of the South about wrongs suffered were but pretences, as they very well knew. This is testimony which was given by one of the leaders in the rebellion, and which will, probably, ere long, be given under hand and seal to the public.