"What is that?" he cried with horror, as the dreadful stigma

spread,

And the patriot's grasp relaxing, undisturbed he gravely said: “That black blotch your hand o'erspreading is the mark by which they know

One who honored by his country, basely sought its overthrowThat detested traitor, Arnold, in the dismal world below!"

Pausing then he from his mantle drew an object toward the light,
Placed it on the oaken table, in the shuddering statesman's sight,
Placed it on the very writing which that traitorous hand had done;
Still, and stark, and grim, and ghastly, 'twas a human skeleton!
There it lay, and then he added, calmly, as he had begun:

"Here behold the sacred relic of a man who long ago
Died at Charleston, on a gibbet, murdered by a ruthless foe-
Isaac Hayne, who fell a martyr, laying down his life with joy,
To confirm this noble Union, you so wantonly employ
Powers for virtuous ends intended, treacherously to destroy.

"When you sign a solemn compact, this blessed bond to disunite,
Lying here upon your table, you should have his bones in sight.
He was born in Carolina, so were you, but all in vain;
Will you look for treason's stigma, will you seek the slightest stain
On the hand of that pure patriot, the right hand of Isaac Hayne ?"

Saying this, the stranger vanished, but the skeleton remained, And the black and blasting stigma, still that traitorous hand retained!

Sinking in their silver sockets, fainter still the tapers gleamed; Suddenly, athwart the chamber, morning's rosy radiance streamed, And the Statesman, wan and weary, wondering woke for he had dreamed!

He had dreamed-but pause and ponder, you who would the Union rend,

Ponder at the bare beginning, on the foul and fatal end.`

Ponder on dark desolation, sweeping through this cherished land,— Heavy hearts, forsaken firesides, waste and woe with war's de

mand,

Ponder on the Traitor's Stigma-pause and look at your right hand!

Gen. Jackson, as President of the United States, informed Calhoun that if he persisted in his treason. that "by the Eternal, he would hang him high as Haman:" and subsequenty regretted that he had not done it. It might have deterred Jeff. Davis & Co.

How striking the contrast between the loyal firmness of Jackson, in thus suppressing incipient rebellion, and the treacherous imbecility of Buchanan, which gave to treason its greatest encouragement.

On receipt of the news of Major Anderson's removal from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter, "the Cabinet was assembled directly, when Mr. Buchanan, explaining the embarrassment of the Secretary of War, remarked that "the act of Major Anderson would occasion exasperation in the South; he had told Mr. Floyd that as the government was strong, forbearance toward erring brethren might win them back to their allegiance, and that that officer might be ordered back!" After an ominous silence the President inquired how the suggestion struck his Cabinet. Mr. Stanton, then AttorneyGeneral, answered; "That course, Mr. President, ought certainly to be regarded as most liberal toward 'erring brethren; but while one member of your Cabinet has fraudulent acceptances for millions of dollars afloat, and while the confidential clerk of another—himself in Carolina teaching rebellion-has just stolen $900,000 from the Indian Trust Fund, the experiment of ordering Major Anderson back to Fort Moultrie would be dangerous. But if you intend to try it, before it is done, I beg that you will accept my resignation."

"And mine," added the Secretary of State, Mr. Black. "And mine, also," said the Postmaster General, Mr. Holt.

"And mine, too," followed the Secretary of the Treasury, Gen. Dix.

This of course opened the bleared eyes of the President, and the meeting resulted in the acceptance of Mr. Floyd's resignation."-THURLOW WEED.

Jefferson Davis, in a speech made in Boston, a few years ago, said "there is none so infamous as he who should raise his hand against the Union." Albert Pike, the renegade Massachusetts school teacher, who led a brigade of savages at the battle of Pea Ridge, had some time previously thus hymned the unutterable wickedness of Disunion, and the remorseless doom of traitors :

Good God! what a title-what name

Will history give to your crime!
In the deep abyss of dishonor and shame.
You will writhe till the last hour of time,
As braggarts who forged their own chains,
Pulled down what their brave fathers built,
And tainted the blood in their children's young veins,
With the poison of slavery and guilt:

And Freedom's bright heart be hereafter tenfold,
For your folly and fall, more dishonored and cold.

Alexander H. Stephens, the Vice President of the bogus Confederacy, in a speech in Milledgeville, December, 1860, paid the following eloquent tribute to the Government he subsequently sought to overthrow :

"That the Government of our fathers, with all its defects, comes nearer the objects of all good governments than any other on the face of the earth, is my settled conviction. "Where will you go, following the sun in its circuit

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round our globe, to find a government that better protects.the liberties of the people, and secures to them the blessings we enjoy? I think that one of the evils that beset us is a surfeit of liberty; an exuberance of the priceless blessings for which we are ungrateful."

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"What right has the North assailed? What interest of the South has been invaded? What justice has been denied? and what claim founded in justice and right has been withheld? Can either of you to-day name one governmental act of wrong, deliberately and purposely done by the Government of Washington, of which the South has a right to complain? I challenge the

answer.

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"Now for you to attempt to overthrow such a Government as this, under which we have lived more than three-quarters of a century, in which we have gained our wealth, our standing as a nation, our domestic safety, while the elements of peril are around us, with peace and tranquility, accompanied with unbounded prosperity, and no rights assailed-is the height of madness, folly and wickedness to which I can neither lend my sanction nor my vote."

It would be well, at times, for those who are seeking to find, and eager to proclaim excuses for the Southern rebellion, to ponder these truthful sayings. Yet alas for human frailty! this same Alexander H. Stephens, sinning against light and knowledge, accepted the Vice Presidency of the Rebel Confederacy; thus, lending his sanction to that madness, folly and wickedness, against which he had so vehemently protested.

The Rebels hastened to open fire on Sumter, fearing the fort would be evacuated, and the opportunity to

"strike a blow," and precipitate Virginia and the other border States, lost. Such was the commencement of the war, and from that moment there was no possibility of making peace with the Rebels, save, by acknowledging their independence.

As was concisely stated, by Daniel S. Dickinson, in one of his speeches, "South Carolina began to scrape lint before the Presidential votes were counted;" and yet the Federal Government stands accused by secessionists with inaugurating the war.

The supremacy in the Government, which they had enjoyed so long, and had so ruthlessly perverted, was about to decline. They had seen the handwriting upon the wall, and could interpret it without the aid of a political Daniel. They knew that unless they could divide and conquer the free North, or frighten her from her propriety, as they had so often done, and extort from her some suicidal concessions, their power in the Union was about to depart forever. They therefore tried the old disunion dodge once more, with great ferocity, and it proved for once of no avail. The old boneless-back compromisers with iniquity were many of them gone, and truer men to liberty and right were in their places. They raved and threatened as madly as ever, and, as many supposed, expecting somebody to hold them as formerly. But nobody held them, and they went too far: they had crossed the Rubicon. Their friends of the border States proposed various compromises, but they were all pseudo, and faithless to right. They were altogether unequal. They were but a new series of exactions in behalf of the South, demanding to be met by impossible and absurd concessions on the part of the North. Some of them demanded the right