"It is no spasmodic effort that has come suddenly upon us: it has been gradually culminating for the last thirty years." Mr. Keitt said, "I have been engaged in this movement ever since I entered political life." Mr. Rhett said, "The secession of South Carolina is not an event of a day; it is not any thing produced by Mr. Lincoln's election, or by the non-execution of the fugitive-slave law: it has been a matter which has been gathering head for thirty years." Thus was this grand conspiracy deliberately nurtured, ostensibly in the interests of the South, but really to give power to an oligarchy against the liberties of mankind. It had been managed with great skill, and chiefly by a few ambitious men. It was virtually conceded that the people were not generally in favor of the measure. Mr. Mullin said, "If we wait for co-operation, slavery and State rights will be abandoned, and the cause of the South lost forever." Mr. Edmund Ruffin of Virginia said he wished Virginia was as ready as South Carolina; but, unfortunately, she was not." No: the people loved their government, and did not wish to sacrifice it on the altar of sectional ambition. Mr. Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, in his celebrated speech in which he undertook to stem the tide of ruin, said most truthfully, "Some of our public men have failed in their aspirations, that is true; and from that comes a great part of our trouble." Had Mr. Stephens stood firmly to his position, his history would have closed grandly; but his fatal adherence to State rights led him to say that he should go with his State. He went, and, by accepting high office under the rebel government, gave reason to suspect that he was not wholly free from the personal ambition to which he had so correctly ascribed the dangers of the Republic.

66

TREASON AND REBELLION.

The first overt act of rebellion was the ordinance of secession. It was an open, formal renunciation of the authority

of the United States. Very grave questions arose from this act. Should the law immediately assert its prerogatives, fill the places of national trust made vacant by the conspiracy, and arrest the leading conspirators? Would the government promptly increase its defences and the number of men in arms within its rebellious territory? No. Whether wise or unwise, it would forbear: it was great, magnanimous, and paternal, and would only remonstrate: it would do nothing, that, in the slightest degree, could be construed into hostility.

In the mean time, rebellion went on. The South immediately began to arouse her people for stern war. Her members of Congress kept their places, and uttered bold, defiant treason in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. But Northern men replied with forbearance, or not at all. Conservatives were allowed to take the lead. Representatives of strong States were ready to pledge the repeal of all obnoxious laws, and promise that there should be no obstacles thrown in the way of the recovery of fugitive slaves. Most condescending compromise measures were brought forward; but Southern men defeated them. A Peace Congress was called, in which the greatest exertions were made to satisfy the proud, defiant spirit that seemed to have no other purpose but to increase the irritation and to gain time. Brave, patriotic men from the border on both sides did their utmost to reach some pacific result; but it was literally impossible. A few men of broad national views stood up manfully for the honor and dignity of their country; but they were overwhelmed by the power of treason on the one hand, and conciliation on the other. Only God could have prevented and did prevent the passage of measures which would have condemned the Republic to irredeemable disgrace. When the last grand crisis came, and only two votes were needed to compromise the government in behalf of the slave-power, Southern men refused the votes; and it was all Once more the voice of the Great Sovereign was heard saying. "Thou shalt not bow down to them."

over.

But rebellion went steadily on. The Executive was without nerve. He declared that the government had no power to coerce a State. There was treason in the cabinet. The Secretary of the Treasury was a Southern man; and he had managed so as to reduce the nation to the very verge of bankruptcy. The Secretary of War was a Southern conspir ator; and he had sent off all the arms within his reach to the South. Mr. Pollard, their own historian, says, "It had been supposed that the Southern people, poor in manufactures as they were, and in the haste for the mighty contest that was to ensue, would find themselves but illy provided with arms to contend with an enemy rich in the means and munitions of war. This disadvantage had been provided against by the timely act of one man. Mr. Floyd of Virginia, when Secretary of War under Mr. Buchanan's administration, had, by a single order, effected the transfer of a hundred and fifteen thousand improved muskets and rifles from the Springfield Armory and Watervleit Arsenal to different arsenals at the South. Adding to these the number of arms distributed by the Federal Government to the States in preceding years of our history, and those purchased by the States and citizens, it was safely estimated that the South entered upon the war with a hundred and fifty thousand small arms of the most approved modern pattern, and the best in the world." Thus had this faithless cabinet minister availed himself of his high position to betray the government he was sworn to defend. He made an additional bold attempt to supply the rebels with heavy ordnance; but the prompt uprising and loyal resistance of citizens of Pittsburg defeated this treacherous order. The Secretary of the Interior, also a Southern secessionist, had suffered an enormous fraud in connection with his department, tending to shake the public confidence in government securities. The obsequious power at the head of the Navy Department had scattered our ships-of-war over the world; so that, at the opening of hostilities, we had but twelve vessels belonging

to the home squadron; and only three of these, with a storeship in the harbor of New York, were in Northern waters.

There was, moreover, treason in the army. Several distinguished generals and subordinate officers of the regular army resigned their commissions, and appeared in command of the organizing forces of rebellion. Finally, Brig.-Gen. Twiggs turned over his whole army in Texas, with property amounting to $1,209,500, besides real estate, to Gen. Ben M'Culloch, representing the rebels in that State. Thus, by one act of most dishonorable treason, the United States lost full one-half of her entire military force.

It would seem that Providence permitted the government of freedom to come up to this terrible crisis, and commence its struggle for life, in a state of absolute helplessness. According to all human appearance, ruin was inevitable.

In the mean time, the public property in the South was seized by the conspirators. One after another, our forts and arsenals, post-offices and vessels, were surrendered to the rebels, or violently seized; and on the ninth day of February, 1861, by a convention in Montgomery, Ala., assembled at the call of South Carolina, the great act of treason was consummated by the formal organization of the Confederate States of America. The Confederate Congress elected Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, President; and Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, Vice-President. With protestations of a desire for peace, but a readiness for war, this treasonable organization entered upon its career of blood and ruin in the spirit of triumph. Mr. Davis said in Stephen, Ala., "Your border States will gladly come into the Southern Confederacy within sixty days, as we will be their only friends. England will recognize us, and a glorious future is before us. The grass will grow in the Northern cities, where the pavements have been worn off by the tread of commerce. We will carry war where it is easy to advance, where food for the sword and torch await our armies in the densely-populated cities; and, though they may come and spoil our crops, we can raise them as before,

while they cannot rear the cities which took years of industry and millions of money to build."

Mr. Stephens said of this new government, "Its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This our new government is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This stone, which was rejected by the first builders, is become the chief stone of the corner in our new edifice. I have been asked, What of the future? It has been apprehended by some that we would have arrayed against us the civilized world. I care not who or how many they may be when we stand upon the eternal principles of truth, we are obliged to and must triumph."

See also with what complacency this otherwise truly great man alludes to the future of the old United States, and the gracious arrangements made for their accommodation, as, one after another, they should by necessity turn to the glorious Confederacy for protection. "Our growth," he says, "by accessions of other States, will depend greatly upon whether we present to the world, as I trust we shall, a better government than that to which they belong. If we do this, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas cannot hesitate long; neither can Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri. They will necessarily gravitate to us by an imperious law. We made ample provision in our constitution for the admission of other States. It is more guarded, and wisely so I think, than the old Constitution on the same subject; but not too guarded to receive them so fast as it may be proper. Looking to the distant future, and perhaps not very distant either, it is not beyond the range of possibility, and even probability, that all the great States of the North-west shall gravitate this way. Should they do so, our doors are wide open to receive them, but not until they are ready to assimilate with us in principle. The process of disintegration in the old Union