than fifty years; and as long as God permits me to live, I will defend that flag with my sword,, even if my own native State assails it.'"

This remarkable statement shows not only the patriotism of Gen. Scott, but the reasonableness of the anxiety which oppressed the public mind. Such unparalleled examples of treachery had so appalled the community, that no one was exempt from suspicion. And even our purest patriots had bosom friends, near relatives, members of their own families, who were in league with the rebels, and kept them informed of every movement.

The conspirators had succeeded in so filling all the offices of the Government with their confederates, and throwing such obstacles in the way of any vigorous action, that it seemed impossible that anything could be done, under the ordinary forms of law, to thwart their deadly machinations. There was no adequate organization for the public defense, and the rebels were so entirely dead to all sense of honor, that men, while retaining the most important stations in the Government, and hypocritically assuming to be patriotic, regardless of the most solemn oaths, were doing everything in their power to betray and ruin their country.

Under these unparalleled circumstances of embarrassment, the President, on the 20th of April, summoned the members of the Cabinet, whom he had selected, and in whom, consequently, he could repose confidence, to meet at the office of the Navy Department. There they unanimously agreed to send an armed revenue cutter to protect the treasure ships expected from California. The commandants of the Navy-Yards of Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, were each called upon to furnish five steamships, for public defense, as soon as possible. Very efficient agents, men of the highest distinction, were employed in making arrangements for the transportation of troops and munitions of war. In reference to

these movements, which 'met the warm approval of the nation, the President subsequently said:

"The several departments of the Government, at that time, contained so large a number of disloyal persons, that it would have been impossible to provide safely, through official agents only, for the performance of the duties thus confided to citizens favorably known for their ability, loyalty, and patriotism. The several orders, issued upon these occurrences, were transmitted by private messengers, who pursued a circuitous way to the seaboard cities, inland across the States of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and the Northern lakes.

"I believe that by these and other similar measures, taken in that crisis, some of which were without any authority of law, the Government was saved from overthrow. I am not aware that a dollar of the public funds, thus confided without authority of law to unofficial persons, was either lost or wasted, although apprehensions of such misdirections occurred to me as objections to these extraordinary proceedings, and were necessarily overruled."

The question will rise, with future generations, how could it happen that hostility so wide-spread and venomous, could spring up against a government so mild, efficient, and just, as that of the United States,-a government which had filled the land with plenty, and, in less than one

century, had raised up a nation second to no other upon the globe, in intelligence, wealth, and power. It requires some knowledge of the workings of the human heart to comprehend the potency of that malignant influence of slavery which infused its poison into our whole system. But the careful student of history will see nothing in it that is strange. The spirit of aristocratic usurpation has been the same in all nations and in all times. It has no existence in Heaven. It comes from beneath, and burns with all the fierceness of infernal fire.

The South, seeing their aristocratic institution endangered by the gradual progress of intelligence and piety, roused itself to this desperate endeavor. "Evil be thou my good," became their law. "Wrong be thou my right," became the fundamental principle of their ethics. "The laborer is not worthy of his hire; you shall not give unto your servants that which is just and equal; you shall not do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you; you shall not break the yoke of bondage; you shall not let the oppressed go free; the ignorant shall not be educated; husbands shall not be entitled to their wives; parents shall not possess their own children;" this became their religion: the expurgated satanic edition of their Christianity.

Now this is moral poison of the most malignant kind. It is the corrosive sublimate of the soul. And yet the South determined to feed upon it, and resolved that the North should eat it. Is it strange that convulsions ensued? It is amazing that in the nineteenth century there could be such audacity in the human mind. Mr. Calhoun advocating these fiendborn principles, says:

"Slavery is the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world." Mr. McDuffie calls it "the corner-stone of the Republican edifice." Senator Hammond, of South Carolina, declares that "its forms of society are the best in the world." Senator Brown, of Mississippi, boasts "that it is a great moral, social, and political blessing." Senator Hunter, of Virginia, has the effrontery to declare in the ears of men who know what slavery is, that the "social system of the slaveholding states is the normal condition of human society, beneficial to the non-slaveholder as it is to the slaveholder, best for the happiness of both races,-the very key-stone of the mighty arch, which, by its concentrated strength, is able to sustain our social superstructure, consists in the black marble block of African slavery. Knock that out," he says, "and the mighty fabric, with all that it upholds, topples and tumbles to its fall." Senator Mason, of Virginia, ventures to say that slavery is "ennobling to both master and slave;" subsequently, however, changing the phrase to "ennobling to the master and elevating to the slave." Mr. McDuffie, of South Carolina, very justly remarks that "slavery supersedes the necessity of an order of nobility."

Thus defiantly was this degrading institution, which John Wesley, thoroughly acquainted with its workings in Georgia and the two Carolinas, had declared to be the "sum of all villanies," and which Jefferson had denounced as the most atrocious outrage upon the laws of God and the rights of man, forcing its way to undermine our free institutions, and to corrupt our Christianity. It is not possible that there should be greater antagon

ism than that between freedom and slavery;-between the Christianity which says, "Break every yoke," and the Christianity which says, "Let the strong put the yoke on the neck of the weak." These were the antagonisms, relentless as death, which the great rebellion developed.

"A slave," says the civil code of Louisiana, "is one who is in the power of a master to whom he belongs. The master may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry, and his labor. He can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire anything, but what must belong to his master." "The cardinal principle of slavery," says Stroud's Law of Slavery, "that the slave is not to be ranked among sentient beings, but among things,-is an article of property-a chattel personal, obtains, as undoubted law, in all of these (slave) states."

The Hon. Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, commenting upon these statements, in his truly magnificent speech upon the "Barbarism of Slavery," delivered in the Senate of the United States, June 4th, 1860, says:

"Out of this definition, as from a solitary germ, which, in its pettiness, might be crushed by the hand, towers our Upas tree and all its gigantic poison. Study it, and you will comprehend the whole monstrous growth. Look at its plain import and see the relations which it establishes. The slave is held simply for the use of his master, to whose behests his life, liberty, and happiness are devoted, and by whom he may be bartered, leased, mortgaged, bequeathed, invoiced, shipped as cargo, stored as goods, sold on execution, knocked off at public auction, and even staked at the gaming-table, on the hazard of a card or a die,-all according to law.

"Nor is there anything, within the limit of life, inflicted on a beast, which may not be inflicted on a slave. He may be marked like a hog, branded like a mule, yoked like an ox, hobbled like a horse, driven like an ass, sheared like a sheep, maimed like a cur, and constantly beaten like a brute, all according to law.

"And should life itself be taken, what is the remedy? The law of slavery, imitating that rule of evidence which, in barbarous days and barbarous countries, prevented a Christian from testifying against a Mahomedan, openly pronounces the incompetency of the whole African race, whether bond or free, to testify in any case against a white man, and thus, having already surrendered the slave to every possible outrage, crowns its tyranny, by excluding the very testimony through which the bloody cruelty of the slave-master might be exposed."

It is indeed refreshing, in contrast with these principles of oppression, to read the healthy views of President Lincoln, upon the subject of liberty. They were uttered in a speech which he made, when a candidate for the Senate of the United States, in opposition to Judge Douglas:

"These communities (the thirteen colonies) by their representatives in old Independence Hall, said to the whole world of men: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His

creatures. Yes, gentlemen, to all His creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of men then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children and their children's children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages.

“Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that, when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, or none but Anglo-Saxon white men, were entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence, and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers beganso that truth, and justice, and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues, might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built.

"Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its grandeur, and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated by our chart of liberty, let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountain whose waters spring close by the blood of the Revolution. Think nothing of me-take no thought for the political fate of any man whomsoever-but come back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence. You may do anything with me you choose, if you will but heed these sacred principles. You may not only defeat me for the Senate, but you may take me and put me to death. While pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do claim to be actuated in this contest by something higher than an anxiety for office. I charge you to drop every paltry and insignificant thought for any man's success. It is nothing; I am nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that immortal emblem of Humanity—the Declaration of American Independence."

9

JOHN BELL.-BRECKINRIDGE.-WARLIKE PREPARATIONS.-TAKING OF ALEXANDRIA.-MURDER OF ELLSWORTH.-INTELLECTUAL CHARACTER OF THE NORTHERN ARMY.-COL. MALLORY AND GEN. BUTLER.-CONTRABANDS.-SOUTHERN OPINIONS AND CONDUCT.-MCCLELLAN ON SLAVERY.-BORDER STATES.-PHILIPPI.-BEAUREGARD'S PROCLAMATION.-BETHEL.-WINTHRÓP.— GREBLE.-BALLOON TELEGRAPH.-VIENNA.-MCCLELLAN'S PROCLAMATION.

THE Washington Star, of May 7th, says, "The scheme of the oligarchy was to have attacked this city some time between break of day of the 18th, and daybreak of the 21st of April ultimo. They had been led to believe that the Virginia ordinance of secession would have been pushed through the Convention a few days before that was accomplished (on the 17th), and that the troops of that State would have been able to take Washington by surprise, between the dates we have named above. John Bell was doubtless in the conspiracy, we apprehend, as his change of front took place just in time to admit of his getting on what he foolishly supposed would be the winning side. The resignation of the large number of army and navy officers, between the 18th and 21st of April, in a body, was doubtless also planned to embarrass the Government, just previous to the meditated attack on the metropolis. The conspirators had no idea that the Government would prove more prompt and efficient in their measures of defense, than they in theirs of attack."

On the 23d of April, John Bell of Tennessee, one of the candidates for the Presidency, openly avowed his union with the rebels. In a speech at Nashville he said, "The time for action and unity of action in the South has arrived. I am for standing by the South, defending the South, all the South, against the unnecessary, aggressive, cruel, unjust, and wanton war which is being forced upon us." He advocated a strong military league of all the slaveholding States, and urged the immediate and effective organization of all their military strength. "To arms, Tennesseeans, to arms!" he cried.

John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, another slaveholding candidate for the Presidency, remained in the Senate of the United States for several months, assuming the air of loyalty, while doing everything in his power to clog the wheels of government, and to facilitate the movements of his outside fellow-conspirators. While Mr. Breckinridge was thus operating, and all under the forms of law, Senator Douglas remarked to a distinguished Kentuckian at Indianapolis, "I know your man Breckinridge