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WHO, NOW, IS RESPONSIBLE?

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that condition of "free society," and mourn over that hardness of heart which would not receive them, it was deemed "agitation," "agitation,” “agitation," nothing but wicked interference with matters which concerned them not, for pulpit, or press, or Church court, to raise even a gentle note of remonstrance. While some who had the sagacity to see what was inevitably coming upon the Church and upon the country from such teachings, and who had the boldness and the faithfulness to God's truth to declare it, -and whose far-sightedness the result has remarkably verified, have been, for that very faithfulness, exiled by the Church from posts of usefulness to which their qualifications and labors eminently entitled them, others, chiefly instrumental in this ostracism, have been honored by Southern votes with high stations, and have illustrated their faithfulness by eminent subserviency to those who so long controlled them. But for all deeds there is a day of reckoning; and we are quite sure the Church itself is beginning to understand those who have been true to her interests and those who have dishonored and betrayed her.

When the day shall eventually come to write the history of this rebellion, it will not be difficult, so far as men of the North are concerned, to determine the true measure of their responsibility. And when the full character and aims of the rebel leaders shall be understood, it will be the judgment of the historian, as it is now the conviction of the loyal masses of the people, that such a disease as had thus fastened itself upon the body politic, could not be purged from it except through the agency of gunpowder -the means which the rebels themselves invoked.

CHAPTER IV.

RESPONSIBILITY FOR BEGINNING AND CONTINUING THE WAR.

THE South admit that they took the initiative for secession, but charge the North with having begun the war. This charge has been made from the beginning, and is deemed so clear that it admits of no dispute. It is found in their public journals, secular and religious, in the speeches of their public men, and is formally set forth and reiterated in the State papers of the rebel President and the members of his Cabinet, and by the rebel Congress.* From the moment of the actual outbreak of hostilities to the present

*"A sense of oppression and wrong, ou the part of the North, in instituting and sustaining this war upon the South, is deep seated and abiding in their minds, and they will shrink from no sacrifices and turn away from no dangers in resisting it.” -Presbytery of Western District, Tennessee, July, 1861. Rev. Dr. Thomas Smyth, of Charleston, S. C., when speaking of "the defensive character of the war of the South," says: "That war, as we have already proved, was provoked, threatened, perfidiously commenced, and openly proclaimed by the North."-Southern Presbyterian Review, April, 1863. In an "Address of (the Rebel) Congress to the People of the Confederate States," issued in February, 1864, it is said: "That a people, professing to be animated by Christian sentiment, and who had regarded our peculiar institution as a blot and blur upon the fair escutcheon of their common Christianity, should make war upon the South for doing what they had a perfect right to do, was deemed almost beyond belief by many of our wisest minds. These reasonable anticipations were doomed to disappointment. The red glare of battle kindled at Sumter, dissipated all hopes of peace, and the two Governments were arrayed in hostility against each other. We charge the responsibility of this war upon the United States. They are accountable for the blood and havoc and ruin it has caused. * * * The war in which we are engaged was wickedly, and against all our protests and most earnest efforts to the contrary, forced upon us." The rebel President, Jefferson Davis, in one of his messages to Congress, referred to in the above-mentioned Address, says: "Our efforts to avoid the war, forced on us as it was by the lust of conquest and the insane passions of our foes, are known to man. kind."

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JOHN M. BOTTS ON SECESSION.

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hour, they have persistently declared that the General Government, sustained by the body of the Northern people, are alone responsible for having begun, and for having continued, the war.

They insist that secession was a peaceful remedy for their wrongs, against which war could not justly be made; and they declare, that, ever since war began, they have been ready to make peace, but that the General Government would not have peace.

These are grave issues, lying at the root of the controversy in which the two sections of the country are involved. We cannot here canvass the alleged right of secession, which is claimed to be a Constitutional remedy for the grievances complained of. Our object, at present, is dif ferent. Whether secession, under the Constitution, be a justifiable remedy for any invasion of right or not, it is only necessary, in reference to the immediate object now in hand, to show, that the kind of secession which the South undertook, was early begun, and was vigorously prosecuted, by acts which can have no other terms of description than those which belong to the vocabulary of war. To assume that such acts are authorized under the Constitution, that they are what it contemplated as proper to be done in carrying out secession, that these are acts of peace, and that therefore secession is a peaceful remedy for supposed wrongs, are propositions so monstrous, that no one can be deceived by them the moment the acts in question come to be examined in their nature and the time of their occurrence.

JOHN M. BOTTS ON SECESSION.

As introductory to a brief narration of early events, well remembered by the whole world, we refer to a letter of the Hon. John Minor Botts, of Virginia, dated Richmond,

January 24, 1861, written in answer to a request made to him to become a candidate for the Convention, which passed the Ordinance of Secession for Virginia. It is well known, that so eager were the Southern rebels for a disruption of the Union, that they rejoiced over the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency, with exceeding great joy, as furnishing the justifiable ground for the step. Referring to this, Mr. Botts says:

I am not willing to sacrifice the best interests of my State and my country, and the hopes of oppressed mankind throughout the world, in upholding South Carolina in a bad cause; in a wholly unjustifiable and petulant whim, which she avows she has indulged for thirty years. I am not willing to rush upon destruction, for a misplaced sympathy for a State that exulted over the election of a Republican President, burned their tar barrels and illuminated their cities, because it afforded them the pretext for rebellion, and that has violently seized upon the forts, arsenals, arms, and ammunition, and money of the United States, and has fired upon, and driven from her waters, an unarmed vessel bearing that flag of the Union which has borne us triumphantly through every war and every trouble.

NARRATIVE OF EVENTS.

These words of Mr. Botts, suggest the events of the fall and winter of 1860-61, which fix indelibly upon the South the responsibility of having begun the war, in repeated and long continued acts of war. The work of revolt began immediately after the election, and in the midst of the rejoicing at the result of it. State after State, by formal acts, openly repudiated the authority of the United States, and "seceded." The people of these States, in various localities, sustained by the public authorities, forcibly seized, as Mr. Botts declares, the public property of the nation. The forts, ships, mints, custom-houses, public money, arms, arsenals, ammunition, and other public property, were taken. All these, confessedly, belonged, not to the re

NARRATIVE OF EVENTS.

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spective States, but to the United States. They were built, manufactured, or purchased, as the property and by the money and authority of the United States. The title was not questioned by any one. Many of these things were taken by force. The guards of mints and custom houses were eluded or overborne; and the forts and ships, in some of the former of which were garrisons, and in the latter armed officers, were seized by bodies of armed men in superior numbers, and the United States forces were compelled to surrender. These were not the acts of mere mob violence. They will take in history, as they have in the eye of public law, a different character. These were ACTS OF WAR; the early measures of an open revolution. They were directly authorized by organized States, which claimed to have thrown off the national authority. They were taken that they might resist by force any attempt on the part of the United States to repossess them, and to re-establish the authority which had been subverted. These acts were, therefore, severally, acts of war, so far as such acts can be, before war has been formally declared by competent authority, or in a revolution before there has been any forcible step taken to resist it. It is possible, that technically these acts may not be acts of war, for there was, as yet, no legal power to declare it; but practically such was, to all intents and purposes, their character.*

Soon after the secession of South Carolina and the seizure of the Forts in the harbor of Charleston, and the like seizure of the Forts within the limits of Georgia and Alabama by those States, the sluggishness of Florida was thus chided by the Charleston Mercury: "To our friends in Florida we would respectfully pass a word. There are two powerful strongholds and most important points of military offence and defence in Florida-Pensacola and Key West. The States both of Georgia and Alabama have wisely taken time by the forelock, and put themselves in possession of such fortresses as lie within their borders." "In this view, it is important for the people of Florida to reflect that there are perhaps no fortresses along our whole Southern coast more important than those of Florida. These Forts can command the whole Gulf trade. And should Mr. Buchanan carry out what appears to be his present plan, he certainly must desire to hold possession of these Forts."

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