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leading member of the Republican party, was the Chairinan. It was in these words: "No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give Congress power to abolish or interfere, in any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or servitude by the laws of said State."

This proposed amendment was intended to meet the specific charge, made all through the South during the Presidential canvass, that the Republican party designed to interfere with slavery in the States. It was indeed a work of supererogation, for no statesman of any party had ever pretended that Congress had any such power as it was proposed here to restrict. But it shows how earnest were the national authorities to promote concord between the North and the South. This measure passed both branches of Congress by the requisite majority of two-thirds, and indeed almost unanimously. It is highly probable that it would have been passed by the required number of the States, had not the violent measures of those in rebellion soon revealed that a prevention of actual hostilities was hopeless.*

The third measure showing a disposition to remove all causes of complaint as far as possible, is seen in the action. of Congress upon the organization of Territories. As before stated, the only question touching slavery upon which the Presidential election turned, was concerning its status in the Territories. Congress, before its close on the 4th

To this proposition to amend the Constitution, President Lincoln referred in his Inaugural Address, as follows: "I understand that a proposed amendment to the Constitution (which amendment, however, I have not seen) has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments, so far as to say, that, holding such a provision to be now implied constitutional law, I have no objections to its being made express and irrevocable."

of March, 1861, organized several Territorial Gover::ments for the remaining portion of the public domain. But instead of ingrafting upon these bills any prohibition of slavery in these Territories,-which they had the power of numbers to do after the withdrawal of the Southern members, as well as the authority of many precedents by Congress from the earliest period, and which would have been in accordance with the sentiments of the people expressed in the election, the whole question was left open to the decision of the people in each Territory when they should form their respective State Constitutions; thus practically allowing to the South all that had been yielded by the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case, that they might go to the Territories with their slaves, and abide the decision of the people whether they should be ultimately free or slave States.*

When such advances were made to the party then in revolt, and when they were met in the well-known manner indicated, no seer was needed to predict the result. In the words of the Hon. Edward Everett, the leaders of the rebellion " were resolved not to be satisfied." They looked with proud contempt upon the men who endeavored to conciliate them, and regarded their most generous concessions as prompted by pusillanimity and cowardice. They believed that a people who could so act would not fight when the trial of arms should come-a mistake of which they have since had ample proof.

This characteristic of the rebellion thus exhibits the most indubitable evidence,-and it is furnished in many other

* In an account of a public meeting held at Louisville, Kentucky, the Louisville Journal of the next day, April 21, 1861, says: "The Hon. John Brown Young followed in a speech unsurpassed in power and brilliancy. This gifted young orator rehearsed the history of the last Congress, the efforts for compromise, the surrender by the Republicans of the fundamental idea of the Chicago Platform, in the positive non-extension of Slavery in the formation of the new Territories."

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public facts, that while the people of the North, represented by their leaders, were disposed to go to extreme lengths in preserving peace, the leaders of the rebellion were as persistently determined, in the face of these overtures, to brave all the hazards and horrors of civil war to carry out their foregone purposes.*

*One of the most thorough specimens of sympathy with the South which we have met with in Northern literature, from a respectable source, since the beginning of the rebellion, is a pamphlet of thirty-two pages from the pen of Rev. Samuel J. Baird, D.D., of New Jersey, entitled "Southern Rights and Northern Duties in the Present Crisis." It is in the form of a Letter, dated February 6, 1861, to the Hon. William Pennington, then Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States. Dr. Baird says: "When a free, enlightened, and Christian people,-and such are our Southern brethren,-are induced to peril all, to rend the ties which have hitherto held them, or even to hesitate upon venturing the fearful experiment of revolution, the causes must be such as stand justified to conscience, and appeal to the highest principles of our nature. Either they are victims of a gigantic fraud, or they labor under grievances of the most serious nature. Upon either alternative, their position is entitled to profound respect, generous forbearance, and anxious study to discover and expose the fraud if they have been deceived, or to rectify the wrong if they are the subjects of real grievance; by any honorable means to allay their anxieties and restore the Union." It is very clear, from the whole pamphlet, that he deems the South the injured party, and most grievously wronged; and the chief responsibility is laid at the door of the "Republican party” which put Mr. Lincoln into office, whose 'attitude" he is led to "examine more particularly," "because the power is in their hands at this momentous crisis." Hence he criticizes their platform and condemns their principles and general course, and in these finds justification or palliatives for the South. Here is a specimen: "So long, in a word, as the representatives of a great party, professing to reflect the sentiments and act in the name of the North, form intrenchments around the Southern States, with the avowed purpose of arresting their further expansion, it is in vain to deny that the South has the most grave and momentous cause of apprehension. * * * It may be our duty to treat the institutions of the South as a crime, and themselves as enemies, to be surrounded and kept in subjection. Upon that question I now say nothing. But, manifestly, the alternative is, that all this is wrong, and an aggression which the South ought not to suffer; or that if right, in absolving us from the obligations to the South which have been heretoforo recognized, it releases the latter from allegiance to the Union." Further on, Dr. Baird says: "My single object has been, to bear a testimony to the claims of justice against us on her behalf-to expose the assumption that it is our peculiar prerogative, as guardians of the Territories, to protect them from the crime and curse of our Southern brethren. To this purpose, it has been shown that the South has just cause of grievance of the most serious character, which demands prompt and cheerful redress at our hands; and rights in the Territories, which neither in honor nor honesty may we disregard." Again: *Our first and imperative duty, in faithfulness to our covenants and to the claims of

PERPETRATED BY FRAUD AND VIOLENCE.

5. The rebellion was carried through the forms of secession, in many of the States, by fraud and violence, against the wishes, and in some against the direct vote, of a majority of the people.

The facts which illustrate this are voluminous, and generally well known. We are compelled to glance at them briefly, and can refer to a few palpable cases only.

The popular vote of Louisiana upon the ordinance of secession was never officially made public. It was charged by the New Orleans papers at the time as being largely against secession, and the officers of the Convention were challenged to proclaim the result. To this day that duty has never been performed by them, while there is the most unquestionable evidence that the State was forced into honor and justice, is to accord to the South any necessary protection against the piratical policy of abolitionism, and a distinct recognition of her rights in the Territories of the United States." What, then, does Dr. Baird wish to have done, and by whom? He would probably have had Congress, when assembled in December, 1860 immediately get down on its knees and beg the South's pardon that the people had elected Mr. Lincoln, even when that Congress had a Democratic majority in both Houses. Hear him: "No one capable of forming an intelligent judgment on the subject, can look over the progress of events at the South, and the results thus far, and doubt that had Congress, at the opening of the present session, PROMPTLY shown a spirit of magnanimous patriotism, such as was so eminently becoming from the stronger to the weaker, and which the circumstances so clearly demanded, the tide of secession would have been stayed on the borders of South Carolina; and that State would soon have returned to her place in our midst." We have shown what measures for "peace" Congress did actually propose when that Democratic majority had been reduced to a minority by the withdrawal of the Southern members. Dr. Baird, nevertheless, mourns over "Congressional inactivity," and denounces "the treacherous passivity of the present session." It is but just to suppose, however, that he would not have belabored Congress in exactly that style, had the proceedings of the whole session been before him at the time he wrote; especially when, at the opening, his friends were in the majority. But after making allowance for this, the character of his pamphlet is such, throughout, that, although by no means as we suppose so intended, it was well calculated and unquestionably did give “aid and comfort" to the rebellion, both among those who were then and long before had been mustering and arming soldiers for the overthrow of the Government, and their hearty sympa thizers all through the North.

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secession against the direct vote of a majority of the people.

Governor Hamilton, of Texas, in an address to the people of that State in January last, not going into any proof of the fact, but incidentally referring to what those whom he was addressing well knew to be true, says: "When you were forced, by a minority, into rebellion, you were in the enjoyment of every blessing ever conferred by civil government upon men."

Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina, were carried into secession by violence and terror, as many of their own newspapers and public men at the time declared. Proof of this which we have in possession would fill many pages. In some States, the whole work was done by a Convention, or by the State Legislature, without the voice of the people taken upon the ordinance of secession; in others, the submission of the question to a popular vote was but a burlesque on the elective franchise. We mention facts which are too recent and too familiar to be doubted, and only refer to them to exhibit another of the striking characteristics of the rebellion.

A single testimony, chiefly concerning the manner in which Virginia was carried "out of the Union," will serve as an example of other cases. It is furnished by a distinguished Southern statesman who was familiar with the scenes he describes:

In these circumstances was the peaceful process of secession set on foot, and the deceived masses of the Southern States stimulated into that unnatural frenzy which wildly hurried them into a treason from which retreat soon became impossible. When this drama of secession came to the stage of its formal enactment in the passage of secession ordinances, it was characterized by frauds only more stupendous than those I have described, because they implicated a greater number of actors and spread over a wider surface. Whilst some of the States, perhaps a majority of them, were in earnest in their resolve to secede