TESTIMONY OF RELIGIOUS BODIES.

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It is thus as clear as any proposition can well be made, from testimony,-and the testimony of those who ought to know, that the great underlying cause of all which prompted the Southern rebellion, was the endeavor to give to the institution of negro slavery greater security, expansion, and lasting perpetuity; and the incitement to this step for these ends was the hue and cry falsely raised through the South, that the incoming Administration of the General Government was pledged to the people who had put it in power, to interfere with the constitutional rights of the institution, or wholly to destroy it.

Ark., and other places, says: "What is the cause of this war? We know that there is but one disturbing element in the country. In the South, where the struggle commenced, there were but two ideas, and they revolved around the negro. One was, we should stay in the Union to protect the negro; the other was, to go out, still to protect the negro. Had there been no negro slavery, there would have been no war. I say so, because I never saw any bitter contest in the country that negro slavery was not the foundation-stone to. Let us, fellow-citizens, endeavor to be calm. Let us look these new ideas and our novel position squarely in the face. We fought for negro slavery. We have lost. We may have to do without it." Governor Bramlette, in his message to the Legislature of Kentucky, says: "Ambitious men of the South, who first sought to create a sectional division upon the tariff, in order to build up a Government based upon the aristocracy of the slave-owner, having been foiled by the incorruptible patriotism and indomitable will of Andrew Jackson, next gave and accepted a sectional quarrel about the slave." "The blinded ambition and obduracy of the Southern secessionists, persistently thrust forward the slave as the object of strife, although the Administration and the ruling powers for more than one year waived it aside, and refused to accept the issue." Hon. J. B. Henderson of Missouri, in a speech in the United States Senate, on the 7th of April last, "in favor of amending the Constitution so as to abolish slavery," thus speaks of the cause of the rebellion: "Shall it be answered that the South made the war before the institution was attacked, and that their only wrong consists in this? The South declares that the rebellion was inaugurated to protect slavery against Northern aggression. Then the Northern Democracy must admit, at the least, that such is the character and influence of the institution that it drove the Southern people into unnecessary war before it was jeoparded by the action of the Government." "The Union is severed in the name of slavery. The civilized world regards slavery as the remote or proximate cause of the war." In the interest of slavery, they claimed the right to sever the Union. They have done so, to the extent of their power." "If the South be wrong, the wrong springs, as they say, from slavery. They themselves GIVE NO OTHER CAUSE for their withdrawal." To this testimony might be added that of the entire press of the South, both secular and religious, that slavery is the grand underlying cause of the rebellion.

INCIDENTAL CONFIRMATORY EVIDENCE.

A great many other public facts known to the whole country confirm this testimony. Secession has been attempted by the public authorities, more or less acting together, in every Border slave State. In Kentucky, in the year 1861, a patriotic and determined Legislature prevented the disloyal designs of Governor Magoffin and other officials. In Maryland, Governor Hicks, sustained by certain Union Senators, refused for a long period to call a meeting of the Legislature, when it was well known that their design, if assembled, was to pass an act of secession; and when at length the body did meet, they were prevented from consummating such a purpose only by the prompt action of the General Government. Governor Burton and other officials did all in their power, consistent with their personal safety, to carry out Delaware. Western Virginia was only saved to the Union by a division of the State. Governor Jackson, of Missouri, and the disloyal element in the Legislature, claimed to have carried that State into secession legally; at least by a process which commended itself to their political consideration. And thus, while every one of the Slave States has either formally enacted or attempted to enact secession, not one of the Free States has made such attempt.

Nor is this all. Some of the Border States which made the attempt to secede, as in the case of Kentucky and Missouri, pretended to organize regular State Governments, in connection with the rebel Southern Confederacy, and have since continued such organizations, "dwelling in tents" and itinerating like menageries, but still claiming authority over the territory of their respective States. For the past two years or more, every Slave State except Maryland and Delaware has been represented in the rebel

SLAVE STATES CLAIMED BY THE REBEL PRESIDENT. 55

Congress. And finally, in full accordance with these sig nificant facts, the State papers and military orders issued from Richmond, together with the whole Southern press, nave always regarded every slave State as making a part of the Southern Confederacy.

ALL SLAVE STATES OFFICIALLY CLAIMED BY THE REBEL

PRESIDENT.

Mr. Davis, the rebel President, gives, among other official proofs, incidental evidence of the position here taken, in his specification of Kentucky, when addressing Vice-President Stephens, in July, 1863, relating to his projected visit to Washington on the "Confederate steamer Torpedo." Mr. Davis says:

The putting to death of unarmed prisoners has been a just ground of complaint in more than one instance; and the recent executions of our officers in Kentucky, for the sole cause that they were engaged in recruiting service in a State which is claimed as still one of the United States, but is also claimed by us as one of the Confederate States, must be repressed by retaliation if not unconditionally abandoned, because it would justify the like execution in every other State of the Confederacy.

This refers to the spies executed by order of General Burnside in Kentucky; although that State, in every popular election, in some half dozen instances since the rebellion began, has given overwhelming majorities for the Union as against secession.

Now, do these uniform, consistent, public, official acts (though of course without just authority), admit of any other explanation than that secession was undertaken, and that the rebellion has been prosecuted through every step in its progress, in entire subserviency to slavery? Their pretended rule was only claimed to extend over the slave States, but yet over all of them. All their acts were marked by a geographical line, and that line bounding freedom

and slavery. Their independence, from first to last, they have insisted, must be acknowledged by granting to them every slave State, and their President, members of Congress, and public journals, have constantly declared that they will never consent to peace on any other terms.*

It would seem that no proposition was ever more fully sustained by testimony of every species, both positive and negative, than that this rebellion has its life-spring in slavery. To preserve, perpetuate, and extend it, has animated its civic councils, furnished the theme for the eloquence of its pulpits, given prowess to its military leaders, sustained the heroic endurance of its soldiery, and nerved to the sacrifices and stimulated the prayers of its people. We know not what more could be possibly added to make out a plainer case.

In regard to the first six reasons presented by Judge Robertson to show that protection to slavery could not have stimulated "the leading conspirators," and in which he says"they knew" this and "they knew" that, we need only reply that sane men might have seen and known all he states, of the then past, present, and future. But the difficulty with those "leading conspirators" was that they were not sane. They were demented. The profits, the glory, and the divinity of slavery had intoxicated them to frenzy. They could see nothing as it was. Our belief is that God had smitten them with judicial blindness; and that, through their infatuation, He intended to accomplish for this nation great purposes of His own-of which we shall speak hereafter. But be this as it may, no truth in the world is better sustained than this, that slavery, as*

* Among the "terms" of peace, on which alone the Richmond Enquirer says the rebels are willing to negotiate, this is stated: "2. Withdrawal of the Yankee forces from every foot of Confederate ground, including Kentucky and Missouri." "The North must yield all; we nothing." These "terms," in which they claim all the Slave States, are given in full, in a note to Chapter iv.

UNLIMITED EXTENSION OF SLAVERY.

57

explained, is the cause of the rebellion against the Government of the United States.

UNLIMITED EXTENSION OF SLAVERY.

But it was not only to preserve slavery where it was established that the rebellion was undertaken. Nor was it, in addition, merely to carry it into the unoccupied domain of the United States. Their scheme was much more grand than this. They aimed to build up a great Slave Empire around the Gulf of Mexico. Mexico and the States of Central America, now free, were to be peopled with negro slaves; and the isles of the sea, now consecrated to freedom, were to be re-enslaved; and with Cuba, these fertile lands of the tropics, united to the Southern States, were to constitute the territory of a nation whose " cornerstone" was to be human bondage.

The proof that this was the magnificent plan contemplated, is overwhelming. General Gantt refers to this in his speeches, from which we have quoted. It was for this he himself fought in the rebel army. He says: "I was a very good type of a pro-slavery man. I said, if the Constitution of our fathers would not protect slavery, no guarantees would do it. I wanted to give that power an expansion, westward to the ocean, and in another direction to take in Cuba and a part of Mexico, and all we could get beyond."

Any one who doubts that it was the scheme of the leaders of the rebellion to extend slavery south and west over countries now free, "to go and root itself," in the language of Dr. Palmer, "wherever Providence and nature might carry it,” and “with the freest scope for its natural development and extension," has not had his eyes open to current and notorious events.

But this is by no means all. To make this "extension"