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ahominy swamp of blunders and outrages against that race which no paper spade can dig through."

To the South the fulmination of Lincoln was a crowning proof of the true principles of the party that had elevated him to the Presidency, and that on its accession to power had made perfidious use of the most solemn pledges.* It was a public confession of the fact that conquest, extermination, and emancipation were the real objects of the war-a fact which the enemy for a while had affected to deny. It attempted to accomplish by the horrors of servile insurrection what our enemy had failed to accomplish by military operations. It confessed to the world his inability and failure to accomplish his pur

* One of the most singular juxtapositions between the professions of the North at the commencement of hostilities and its present ideas, is afforded in Mr. Seward's famous letter, written to the French government on the 22d April, 1861, and his subsequent circular to the Yankee ministers in Europe. It is one of the most singular of all the juggleries and summersaults of Yankee diplomacy.

In the first pronunciamento of Secretary Seward, written "by the direction of the President," occurs the following passage:

"The condition of slavery in the several States will remain just the same, whether, it succeeds or fails. The rights of the States, and the condition of every human being in them, will remain subject to exactly the same laws and form of administration, whether the revolution shall succeed or whether it shall fail. Their constitutions, and laws, and customs, habits, and institutions, in either case will remain the same. It is hardly necessary to add to this incontestable statement, the further fact that the new President, as well as the citizens through whose suffrages he has come into the administration, has always repudiated all designs whatever, and wherever imputed to him and them, of disturbing the system of slavery as it is existing under the constitution and laws. The case, however, would not be fully presented were I to omit to say that any such effort on his part would be unconstitutional, and all his acts in that direction would be prevented by the judicial authority, even though they were assented to by Congress and the people."

Within eighteen months after Seward declares officially to one of the ministers of the government that the President has no wish and no right to interfere with the institutions of the "rebellious" States, he writes another letter, also directed to the ministers abroad, announcing the adoption of a policy which, if it could be carried out, would make a complete revolution in the social organization of the South. Utterly regardless of his former position and declaration, he undertakes to justify the "emancipation" proclamation of the Yankee President. But this is not all. What shall we say of the effrontery of the lie, when Seward asserts that the abolition proclamation is not only a 'ust and proper act, but avows his belief that the world will recognize "the moderation and magnanimity with which the government proceeds in a matter so solemn and important!"

poses by regular and honorable hostilities. It was, in short, the diabolical attempt of an infatuated ruler, unworthy of authority, in a fit of disappointed malice, to inflict the worst horrors known to human nature upon eight millions of people who had wisely rejected his authority.

The "emancipation" proclamation not only strengthened the South and nerved her to greater exertions in the war, but it fortunately gave occasion to the world for a more interested observation and closer study of the peculiar institution of the Confederacy. The sympathies of Europe with the anti-slavery party in America were depressed by the conduct.of that party, its exhibitions of ferocity, and by the new manifestations which the war had made of the nature and moral condition of negro slavery in the South.

Indeed, the war had shown the system of slavery in the South to the world in some new and striking aspects, and had removed much of that cloud of prejudice, defamation, falsehood, romance, and perverse sentimentalism through which our peculiar institution had been formerly known to Europe. It had given a better vindication of our system of slavery than all the books that could be written in a generation. It had shown that slavery was an element of strength with us; that it had assisted us in our struggle; that no servile insurrections had taken place in the South, in spite of the allurements of our enemy; that the slave had tilled the soil while his master had fought; that in large districts unprotected by our troops, and with a white population consisting almost exclusively of women and children, the slave had continued at his work quiet, cheerful, and faithful; and that, as a conservative element in our social system, the institution of slavery had withstood the shocks of war, and been a faithful ally of our arms, although instigated to revolution by every art of the enemy, and prompted to the work of assassination and pillage by the most brutal examples of the Yankee soldiery.*

* The missionary settlements of the Yankees on the coast of South Caro lina were an acknowledged failure, so far as the proposed education and exaltation of the blacks were concerned. The appearance of the ancient town of Beaufort, since it had fallen into the enemy's possession, indicated the peculiarities of Yankee rule, and afforded an interesting exhibition of their relations with the negro: The inhabitants had taken nothing away with them but their

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Since the commencement of the war the North had had almost exclusive access to the ear of the world, and had poured into it whatever of slander or of misrepresentation human ingenuity could suggest. This circumstance, which was at first thought to be a great disadvantage to us, had not only proved a harmless annoyance, but had resulted in invaluable benefit. It had secured sympathy for us; it had excited the inquiries of the intelligent, who, after all, give the law to public opinion; and it had naturally tempted the North to such lying and bravado as to disgust the world.

At the beginning of the war the North had assured the world that the people of the South were a sensual and barbarous people, demoralized by their institution of slavery, and depraved by self-will and licentiousness below the capacity for administrative government. The best reply to these slanders, was our conduct in this war. Even the little that was known in Europe of the patriotic devotion, the dignity and cultivated humanity of the people of the South, as shown in the war, had been sufficient to win unbounded encomiums for them. We had not only withstood for nearly two years a power which had put thirteen hundred thousand men in the field; but we had

personal property and their valuable domestic slave servants. The furniture was left untouched in the houses. These houses were owned by the Barnwells, the Rhetts, the Cuthberts, the Phillipses, and other distinguished families of North Carolina. The elegant furniture, the libraries, the works of art, had nearly all disappeared. They had been sent North from time to time by Yankee officers, and many of these officers of high rank. The elegant dwelling-houses had been converted into barracks, negro quarters, hospitals, and storehouses. The best houses had been put in complete order, and were occupied by the officers of the department and the abolitionist missionaries from Boston and elsewhere. The efforts of these missionaries to teach the negroes their letters and habits of cleanliness met with no success. Beaufort was full of negroes, well clothed, at government expense, fat, saucy, and lazy. The town looked dirty and disorderly, and had the appearance of a second-class Mexican village. Some of the missionaries had been elevated to the position of planters, and occupied the estates of the old Carolinians. The labor on these estates was performed by contraband negroes. These abolition lords assumed all the hauteur and dignity of the Southern planter. The only difference to the black laborer was that he had the name of freeman; his labor was as unrelenting as ever. Massachusetts missionaries and Massachusetts speculators enjoyed the larger share of government patronage here. The department of Hunter appeared to be experimenting in attempts to elevate a negro to equality with the white man. Military operations were secondary considerations.

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