measures in the government which have been plainly directed against their own liberties, and which, while they have been applauding a "vigorous prosecution of the war," have established a savage despotism at home. It is yet more remarkable that the erection of this despotism should be hailed with a certain applause by its own victims. History has some instances of the servile and unnatural joys of a people in the surrender of their liberties; but none grosser than that in which has been inaugurated the throne of Abraham Lincoln at Washington. There are numerous examples in history where great abilities or some scattered virtues in the character of a despot have won the flattery of minds not ignoble and unconscious of their humiliation. Milton in his Latin superlatives spoke of Cromwell very much after the same manner in which Mr. Lincoln is spoken of in Yankee vernacular. Eum te agnoscunt omnes, Cromuelle, ea tu civis maximus et gloriosissimus, dux publici consilii, exercitum, fortissimorum imperator, pater patria gessisti. But the Western lawyer and tavern-jester is not a Cromwell. No attractions of genius are to be found in the personal composition of Abraham Lincoln. His person in fact is utterly unimportant. He holds the reins for a higher power; and that power is the many-headed monster of Fanaticism, which by numbers or by force constrains the popular will and rules with the rod of iron. The disposition generally of the Northern people to submit to or tolerate the assaults of the Washington government on their own liberties and the destruction of their civil rights, must proceed from permanent and well-defined causes. We have already hinted in these pages an explanation of this servile acquiescence in the acts of the government. It is doubtless the fruit of the false political education in the North, that gives none other but materialistic ideas of government, and inculcates the virtue of time-serving with all political majorities. It is to be attributed to the demoralization of the Yankee; to the servile habit of his mind; to his long practice of submission to the wild democracy of numbers,-all proceeding from that false idea of government which recognizes it only as the organ of an accidental party, and not as a self-existent principle of right and virtue. It is a melancholy fact that the people of the North have long ceased to love or to value liberty. They have ceased to esteem the political virtues; to take any account of the moral elements of government; or to look upon it else than as a physical power, to be exercised at the pleasure of a party, and to be endured until reversed by the accident of numbers. The superficial political education of the people of the North explains much that is curious in their society. Time-serving of power gave them wealth, while it degraded their national character. In the old government they easily surrendered their political virtue for tariffs, bounties, &c.; and the little left of it is readily sacrificed on the devilish altars of this war. Their habit of material computation made them boastful of a "civili- . zation" untouched by the spirits of virtue and humanity, consisting only of the rotten, material things which make up the externals and conveniences of life, and the outer garments of society. Their wealth was blazed out in arts and railroads; common schools, the nurseries of an insolent ignorance; and gilded churches, the temples of an impure religion. No people has ever established more decisively the fact of the worthlessness of what remains of "civilization," when the principle of liberty is subtracted, or more forcibly illustrated how much of phosphorescent rottenness there is in such a condition. "Their much-loved wealth imparts Convenience, plenty, elegance, and arts; Even liberty itself is bartered here; At gold's superior charms all freedom flies, The present war has sufficiently demonstrated the mistake of the North in the measure of its civilization, and convinced the world that much of what it esteemed its former strength was "but plethoric ill." It has done more than this, for it has unmasked the moral nature of the Yankee. It has exposed to the detestation of the world a character which is the product of materialism in politics and materialism in religion-the spawn of the worship of power and the lust of gain. The Yankee-who has followed up an extravagance of bluster by the vilest exhibitions of cowardice-who has falsified his prate of humanity by the deeds of a savage-who, in the South, has been in this war a robber, an assassin, a thief in the night, and at home a slave fawning on the hand that manacles him-has secured for himself the everlasting contempt of the world. The characteristics of a people who boasted themselves the most enlightened of Christian nations, are seen in a castrated civilization; while the most remarkable qualities they have displayed in the war are illustrated by the coarse swagger and drunken fumes of such men as Butler, and the rouged lies of such "military authorities" as Halleck and Hooker. All vestiges of constitutional liberty have long ago been lost in the North. The very term of "State rights" is mentioned with derision, and the States of the North have ceased to be more than geographical designations. No trace is left of the old political system but in the outward routine of the government. The Constitution of the United States is but "the skin of the immolated victim," and the forms and ceremonies of a republic are the disguises of a cruel and reckless despotism. During the two miserable and disastrous years that Mr. Lincoln has held the presidency of the United States, he has made the institutions of his country but a name. The office of president is no longer recognized in its republican simplicity; it is overlaid with despotic powers, and exceeds in reality the most famous imperial titles. Not a right secured by the Constitution but has been invaded; not a principle of freedom but has been overthrown; not a franchise but has been trampled under foot. The infamous "death order" published by Burnside, more bloody than the Draconian penalty and more cruel than the rude decrees of the savage, is without a parallel in the domestic rule, or in the warfare of any people making the feeblest pretence to civilization. It assigns the penalty of death to writers of letters sent by secret mails," and to all persons who "feed, clothe, or in any manner aid" the soldiers of the Confederacy. This infamous decree will live in history; it is already associated with a memorable martyrdom - that of Clement Vallandigham. It is remarkable that the North finds great difficulty in assigning to the world the objects of the present mad and inhuman war. The old pretences made by the Yankees of fighting for a constitutional Union, and contesting the cause of free government for the world, are too absurd and disgusting to be repeated. They are unwilling to admit that they are fighting for revenge, and prosecuting a war, otherwise hopeless, for the gratification of a blind and fanatical hate. They have recently changed the political phrases of the war, and the latest exposition of its object is, that the North contends for "the life of the nation." If this means that a parasite is struggling for existence, and that the North desires the selfish aggrandizements of the Union, and its former tributes to its wealth, we shall not dispute the theory. But the plain question occurs, what right has the North to constrain the association of a people who have no benefit to derive from the partnership, and who, by the laws of nature and society, are free to consult their own happiness? The North has territory and numbers and physical resources enough for a separate existence, and if she has not virtue enough to sustain a national organization, she has no right to seek it in a compulsory union with a people who, sensible of their superior endowments, have resolved to take their destinies in their own hands. There is one sense, indeed, in which association with the South does imply the national welfare of the North. The South gave to the old government all its ideas of statesmanship; it leavened the political mass with its characteristic conservatism; and it combated, and, to some extent, controlled the brutal theory that represented numbers as the element of free government. The revolutionary and-infidel society of the North was moderated by the piety and virtues of the South, and the old national life was in some degree purified by the political ideas and romantic character of that portion of the country now known as the Confederacy. It is in this sense that the Southern element is desirable to the North, and that the Union involves "the life of the nation ;" and it is precisely in the same sense that an eternal dissociation and an independent national existence are objects to the South not only of desire, but of vital necessity. We can never go back to the embraces of the North. There is blood and leprosy in the touch of our former associate. We can never again live with a people who have made of this war a huge assassination; who have persecuted us with savage and cowardly hate; who gloat over the fancies of starving women and children; who have appealed to the worst passions of the black heart of the negro to take revenge upon us; and who, not satisfied with the emancipation proclamation and its scheme of servile insurrection, have actually debated in their State Legislatures the policy of paying negroes premiums for the murder of white families in the South.* While we congratulate ourselves on the superiority of our political ideas over those of the North, and the purer life of our society, we do not forget that, although we have carried away much less of the territory and numbers of the old Union than have been left to our enemy, we still have a sufficiency of the material elements of a national existence. The South has attempted to lay the foundations of national independence, with a territory as great as the whole of Europe, with the exception of Russia and Turkey; with a population four times that of the continental colonies; and with a capacity for commerce equivalent to nearly four-fifths of the exports of the old Union. It is only necessary to glance at the contemporary aspects of the war to reassure our confidence in its destiny, and to renew our vows upon its altars. The hope of reconstruction is a vanity of the enemy. To mobocratic Yankees; to New England * The following is taken from an Abolition pamphlet (1863), entitled “Interesting Debate," etc., in the Senate of Pennsylvania. It is characteristic of the blasphemous fanaticism of the Yankee and his hideous lust for blood: "Mr. LOWRY-I believed then and now that He who watches over the sparrow will chastise us until we will be just towards ourselves and towards four millions of God's poor, down-cast prisoners of war. I said that I would arm the negro-that I would place him in the front of battle-and that I would invite his rebel master with his stolen arms to shoot his stolen ammunition into his stolen property at the rate of a thousand dollars a shot. I said further, that were I commander-in-chief, by virtue of the war power and in obedience to the customs of civilized nations, and in accordance with the laws of civilized nations, I would confiscate every rebel's property, whether upon two legs or four, and that I would give to the slave who would bring me his master's disloyal scalp one hundred and sixty acres of his master's plantation; nor would I be at all exacting as to where the scalp was taken off, so that it was at some point between the bottom of the ears and the top of the loins. This, sir, was my language long before Fremont had issued his immortal proclamation. The logic of events is sanctifying daily these anointed truths. Father, forgive thou those who deride and vilify me, because I enunciated them: they know not what they do." in a mich very has cruce died in a mathons |