Dec. 21,-As indicative of the course the Republican members of Congress are to pursue in regard to compromise measures, the speech of Senator Wade, of Ohio, before the Senate Select Committee of Thirteen, on the Crisis, is the first declaratory expression. It took ground against any amendments of the Constitution. and generally expressed opposition to compromises which looked to giving slavery any constitutional protection or recognition. He said Mr. Lincoln was constitutionally elected and should be constitutionally inaugurated. -Judge Douglas made important statements before the Senate Select Committee of Thirteen. He is reported as saying, "that he was ready now to unite in recommending such amendments to the Constitution as will take the Slavery question out of Congress. In view of the dangers which threaten the Repuplic with disunion, revolution, and civil war, he was prepared to act upon the matters in controversy without any regard to his previous action, and as if he had never made a speech or given a vote on the subject." Dec. 22. The North Carolina Legislature adjourned to January 7th. The bill to arm the State failed to pass the House. --Caleb Cushing, special messenger of the President to South Carolina, to induce the postponement of the adoption of the ordinance of secession, returns and reports the passage of the ordinance, and reports no hopes of any arrangement of the pending differences. A Cabinet meeting was called. Dec. 23.-Intense excitement in Washington, consequent upon the discovery of a heavy defalcation in the Department of the Interior, by abstraction of bonds and coupons belonging to the Indian Trust Fund. The amount abstracted is confessed by Godard Bailey, the guilty clerk, to have been $830,000. Mr. Floyd, Secretary of War, is said to be deeply implicated by the revelations made. Dec. 24.--The Speaker of the House directs the names of the "withdrawn" South Carolina members to be retained on the roll and to be regularly called. -Great excitement in Pittsburg in consequence of orders being given to ship, from the Alleghany Arsenal, 78 ten and eight-inch columbiads to Fort Newport, near Galveston, and 48 to Ship Island, near Balize, at the mouth of the Mississippi-both unfinished forts. The people regard the order as designed to strip the Arsenal in order to place the heavy guns in the hands of the enemies of the Government and will oppose their removal by force. -The South Carolina Convention adopts a "Declaration of Immediate Causes which Justified the Secession of South Carolina from the Union." -The Special Commissioners, appointed by the South Carolina Convention to negotiate a settlement of differences and a treaty of amity and commerce with the United States, leave Charleston for Washington. -Gov. Moore convenes the Legislature of Alabama for January 14th, to provide for any emergency that may arise from the action of the Convention, which meets January 7th. Dec. 25. Among other important transactions of the South Carolina Convention was the reception of three resolutions from the Committee on Relations with the Slaveholding States of North America. The first resolution provides that the Convention appoint Commissioners to proceed to each Slaveholding State that may assemble in Convention, for the purpose of laying before them the ordinance of secession and respectfully to invite their co-operation in forming a Southern Confederacy. The second resolution authorises the said Commissioners to submit the Federal Constitution as the basis for a provisional Government for such States as shall have withdrawn from the connection with the Government of the United States of North America. The third resolution provides that the said Commissioners be authorized to invite seceding States to meet in convention at such a time and place as may be agreed upon for the purpose of forming a permanent Government for these States. All of which were acted upon affirmatively, after considerable discussion. They are regarded as having been arranged by the secession leaders, long since, and look to a co-operative union among the slave seceding States. Dec. 26. -The three South Carolina Commissioners, viz.: Messrs. R. W. Barnwell, James L. Orr, and ExGov. Adams arrive in Washington. -A resolution offered in the South Carolina Convention, that the Governor be requested to communicate to the Convention in secret session, any information he possesses in reference to the condition of Forts Moultrie and Sumter, and Castle Pinckney, the number of guns in each, the number of workmen and kind of labor employed, the number of soldiers in each, and what additions, if any, have been made since the 20th inst.; also, whether any assurance has been given that the forts will not be re-enforced, and if so, to what extent; also, what police or other regulations have been made, if any, in reference to the defenses of the harbor of Charleston, the coast and the State. Gov. Houston will convene an extra session of the -It is now announced by advices from Texas, that Texas Legislature on the 21st of January, to consider the present crisis. The Convention of the people will be held on the 28th of January. The secession element is rapidly gaining the ascendancy. It will carry all before it in the Convention. -Major Anderson commences the evacuation of Fort Moultrie at night. Dec. 27.-Gov. Magoffin calls an extra session of the Kentucky State Legislature to assemble Jan. 17th, to consider the distracted state of the country. -It is ascertained at Charleston that Fort Moultrie is evacuated. The evacuation took place during the night, Major Anderson transferring his entire force (about eighty men) with stores, munitions, movable arms, &c., to Fort Sumter. Most intense excitement in consequence throughout the entire country. The military in Charleston ordered out. Troops tendered by Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. CHAPTER I. The True Reason. THE TRUE CAUSE OF THE REBELLION, THE Secession movement, which took form and consistency by the action of South Carolina, immediately after the election of Mr. Lincoln, was not the conception of an hour. It was not the result of the election of a "sectional" President. It was not the result of wrongs inflicted upon the South by the Free States. It was not because the North had perverted the Constitution from its original intent and purposes. gia and the Indians for the same purpose. Alabama was made out of Georgia and Mississippi territory, to increase the representation. Tennessee was cut out of Kentucky territory for the same purpose. Florida was purchased of Spain, at great expense, to the same end. Then followed a step over the Mississippi river, to appropriate territory lying to the west of the territory given to free labor by the ordinance of Mr. Jefferson; and Missouri, with her lines running as far North as the centres of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, was given up to Slavery and a Slave representation in Congress. Arkansas, ere long, was added. Then the soil fitted for Slave labor, and accessible for Slave settlement, seemed exhausted, and the South, for a while, stood still to witness the onward march of the North. Even these enormous accessions of scarcely served to maintain the Southern preponderance in the Government, so rapidly had the Free States grown in population, both in the old and the three new States added. It is urged, by the leaders of the movement, that these were their reasons for the attempt to dissolve the Union, and the mass of our people doubtless have regarded these as the true grounds of complaint; but, it is the merest surface view of the question. Were these the only excuses to offer for the Rebellion and all its train of blood, what a miserable pretence of justification the move-domain ment would have! The motive which underlies all is the numerical preponderance of the North, and, under the Constitution, its ability hereafter to control the legislation of Congress by virtue of its resistless majority. Purchases of new Territory. Schemes of Conquest Thus matters stood in 1840. The census of that Each census, since 1800, year aroused the South to has shown that the increase renewed efforts for further extension of the of population in the North- "peculiar institution." To the North they ern, or Free States, was in a ratio soon to could not go, for soil, climate and sentiment snatch from the Slave States their almost were alike inimical to the existence of slaves unbroken control of the Government; hence in the territory of Iowa. To the West they from that time the study has been to avert could not proceed, for Government had the impending minority by the introduc- pledged that section to the Indians. Contion of new Slave States to the Union. Lou-quest alone must come to the rescue. Texas, isiana was purchased at an enormous price, an immense domain, fitted to make five not more to open the mouths of the Mis- States, must be won. The scheme of its ansissippi than to send to Congress two Slave nexation" was soon conceived and perfected. Senators and her due quota of Representa- War was declared upon a flimsy pretext tives. Mississippi was purchased from Geor- against a weak and distracted neighbor.-One 66 hundred millions of dollars were spent, and Texas was given over to the Slave power to be made into States, as emergencies should require; while New Mexico, with her boundless plains, lay to the West, to await the necessity for her introduction to a Slave proprietary. But, even this absorbtion of an empire did not suffice. The census of 1850 again sent consternation into the "balance of power" ranks, and excited their leaders to renewed zeal. More territory must be had, at any sacrifice. Kansas and Nebraska alone offered the soil, but there stood the Gibraltar of Henry Clay's "Compromise Act" of 1821, guaranteeing all that region to Freedom forever. Still, the emergency was imperative. Kansas at least must be represented on the floors of Congress by a Slave delegation. The tremendous strides of the North, in Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota, threatened, by their very growth, to leap at once into an uncontrolled majority. Kansas lost, all was lost, since Texas could not, for years, gain population enough to allow of her subdivision into several States. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise Act alone would open the Territory for Slave incursion. That repeal was made, through the co-operation of the Northern Democratic party with the South. But, the hand of Destiny seemed to interfere. The entire scheme of Southern settlement miscarried, and Kansas not only became a Free State, but the struggle to make it such called into existence the Republican party, which, in a brief period, elected its candidate to the Chief Magistracy-so fatally were the tables turned. Dismayed at the storm created by the effort to secure Kansas, mortified at their defeat, cut off from any further extension of Slave representation, the Southern States saw before them their long-apprehended disaster of a minority in the Government. If they remained in the Union it must be as the weaker half. At this not only their pride revolted, but, as it appeared to them, their material interests forbade submission. With some hesitancy, as if feeling the way, the long contemplated scheme of Southern independence was revived and its agitation determinedly entered upon. Fictitious Causes. But, the love of the Union was so strong in the hearts of a majority in the Southern States-the disinclination to encounter the hazards of a revolution was so apparent— that it became necessary for the leaders to act with great circumspection in setting on foot their movement for disunion. The old themes of wrongs endured-of slaves stolen— of unjust imposition of taxes by way of tariff levies—of unconstitutional Personal Liberty acts by Northern States--were augmented in force by the evident fact that the institution of Slavery was to be excluded from the Territories in the West, thus seemingly denying the rights of the South in the unsettled and common domain; while, to crown the list of motives for non-submission, the North had become so far estranged and inimical to the South as to elect a "sectional" President. This catalogue of indignities, if properly represented to the excitable and sensitive people of the South, could not fail to answer the ends designed; hence, separately and collectively, they have been put forward as the real causes of the uprising and of the abjuration of the Constitution, and have been so often and variously repeated that the original and prime cause of the movement is almost ignored. In contemplating the events which have transpired in the attempt to dismember the Union, it is necessary to accept the bill of complaint preferred in the various resolutions, ordinances and declarations of the seceded States' Conventions and Legislatures; but, a comprehensive understanding of the revolution can only be had by striking at the ultimate causes which originated the desire for a separate Confederacy. Even though those first causes may not be confessed nor set forth by any of the parties implicated-a confession which would concede defeat in the struggle for power-they nevertheless are readily demonstrable. THE NATIONAL CENSUS. 27 cent. per annum. This ratio being so defini- | ulation, these three States lose four Repretively marked, rendered it an easy matter for sentatives. New York alone has nearly any section to indicate, in advance, its popu- double the free population of the six original lation and consequent Congressional repre- "Seceded States," and yet she has only thirsentation. Hence, the South, growing more ty-one Representatives to their twenty-eight, slowly in population than the energetic, This simple fact proves how largely slaves are competitive North, discovering itself beat- represented in Congress-the negroes entering en in the race of numbers, sought to make into "population" in the proportion of five up in territorial acquisition what it failed negroes for three in count, thus obtaining a to obtain by popular increase. Congressional apportionment without any of the rights of citizenship appertaining to them. If the Slave States were apportioned Representatives on their free white population alone, their representation in Congress would decrease about forty per cent; or, as Slaves are property, if the Free States were represented on property in the apportionment of three persons for every five thousand dollars, their Congressional delegations would immeasurably be increased.* In 1850 it was conclusive that the South must be cast into a minority if new acquisitions were not secured during the decade following. The attempt was made on Kansas and failed; and the South has had to witness the long threatened ascendency of the Free States in the returns and apportionment of the census of 1860, with no power to modify the result. The Census. To apprehend, at a glance, the particular strength of each section of the Union, and thus to demonstrate the fact of the ascendancy of the Free States, we will classify the States, and give the Congressional representation of each, under the new apportionment rendered necessary in order to keep the number of Representatives in Congress down to 233. ....2,728,116 3,135,301 25 Gain in 10 years, 407,185, or 15 per cent nearly. New England, it will thus be seen, loses four members of Congress, notwithstanding her gain has been over four hundred thousand in population. MIDDLE STATES. 0 States. Total.......5,898,911 7,465,943 59 0 0 0 2 0 Here we have still more remarkable sults. Notwithstanding the enormous increase of over one and a half million, in pop * There is something so paradoxical in the constructive and the active relations of the Slave to the government as to excite the wonder of a foreigner. Thus, by the Constitution, the principle of represen tation on property is forbidden, yet it gives the Slave States a representation as stated. This would seem to settle, beyond question, the fact that the Constitution does not recognize Slaves as property. Yet, here comes the decision of the United States Supreme Court, in the celebrated Dred Scott Slave Case, that Slaves are property, and property only, not men. It will be hard for a stickler for consis re-tency to reconcile this discordance. He will have to be satisfied with the fact without understanding its propriety. Representatives in Congress, while they have | New England States. twenty-eight. Few even of our own people realize how enormous this discrepancy has been; but, figures here are incontrovertible witnesses, and prove how largely Slaves are represented in our National councils. The fact thus expressed it is necessary to weigh well in any argument which may arise on the relative favors which the Constitution bestows upon particular sections. States. PACIFIC STATES. Middle States. North Western States. Pacific States. The Free Territories.. 3,135,301 7,465,943 7,870,896 432.479 213,292 Total pop. of Free States and Territories...19,117,911 Total loyal population........ These are the figures deduced from the Census re 1850. 1860. Reps. Loss. Gain. turns for 1860, prepared California.... 92,597 380,015 3 Oregon..... 12,294 52,464 0 1 1 0 0 0 Total......104,891 432,479 4 1 Both of these States are loyal to the Union and are classed with the Free States in all comparative estimates. THE LOYAL SLAVE STATES. 2,698,841 21,816.752 5,581,630 ,16,235,122 Effects of the Census. under the supervision of a Southern man. That they are correct admits of no doubt. The results, gratifying to the North, disconcert the South, since they prove it to be helplessly in the minority. In the Union the power of the Slave States is forever gone, except, acting as a unit, they can take advantage of party divisions in the North to name certain single measures, or elect certain men; but, without a very strong co-operating party Reps. Loss.Gain. in the Free States, the Pro-Slavery propagandists are perfectly powerless to secure more soil, to command the Executive, to direct the revenues and appropriations, or to control legislation in their favor. The Constitution may be regarded by the Northern States to the letter-the Fugitive Slave Act may be enforced against every runaway negro slavethe right to slave transit through the Free States may be conceded; but these will not avail to appease the Southern mind. The facts of their minority-that Slavery is circumscribed in the Union-that the Free soil and Free labor party is immensely in the ascendant-impelled the Southern people into the scheme for founding a pure Slave Confederacy, and no "compromise" will restore them to the Union except it be such a compromise as will abjure the old Constitution so far as to give the Slave States an equal share in the General Government at all times, an equal share in the common territory, the right of Slave transit through Free soil, the use of local officers and jails to arrest fugitives, &c., &c. Other terms than these they will not, cannot, peaceably accept, and if brought back into the Union again it must be vi et armis. 2 1 8 2 3 0 0 1 1 0 3 This classification gives interesting results, which it will be well for the reader to consider. Thus, the total free white population of the eleven seceded States is 5,581,630, or 1,884,313 less than the population of the three Middle States alone, or 2,289,266 less than the eight North Western States. Or, add the aggregate as follows: |