"There is scarcely an individual or an interest in any community throughout what is left of the Union and that portion which has placed itself in belligerent attitude to the prestige and power of the government, but what feels and is affected by the awful crisis which has prostrated the energies and divided the sympathies of the American people. As well feel it now, and as we are now arrested in our development and progress, the whole civilised world must sooner or later come within the influences of the raid which now seeks to plunge this hemisphere into civil war of the most unrelenting and bloody consequences. Those who have provoked the strife are those who seek to transfer its responsibility to the people, because they have, in the exercise of their rights and judgments, elevated to power men of tried moral worth and patriotic incentives. The triumph of the Republican party is made the excuse for the treason at the South by the men at the North who have lost an ally in every Southern traitor - while the leaders of the revolution themselves boldly declare that the election of Abraham Lincoln has nothing to do with their usurpation or their felonies. They claim the right of revolution and they have exercised such a right. On this claim they rest the justification of their acts, and by their success they illustrate either their own promises and power, or the instability and inefficiency of the Constitution and laws of the land. Since 1833 the secession movement of the South has been gaining strength with every successive triumph of the Democratic Party, until it has culminated in the success of its leaders so far as they have been able to entrench themselves behind their defiance of the legitimate government of the country. The idea that the treason of Jeff Davis was induced by present causes is as foolish as the assertion that South Carolina went out of the Union to vindicate a right or redress any real wrong. The actual motive of both was revenge. The true cause of the secession movements, the disappointment of those who have instigated it, in maintaining their positions in power, and covering up the corruptions which have disgraced their rule from the hour they gained possession of the government. The enormity of these corruptions has to often startled the nation to be repeated by us - and as there is a God to punish the crimes and the excesses of nations as well as men, we need to be surprised that he has suffered the American people to go astray in their pursuits of peace and prosperity. The corruption of our government has indeed become unparalleled in history or experience. From secret fraud to open bribery, we have arrived at the dreadful vortex of disunion, in which are concealed civil war, social extinction and national extermination.
This crisis was bequeathed to the administration of Abraham Lincoln by that which has preceded him. It is now made the pretext for the most vile attacks on the Republican party. The Democratic press first seek to excuse secession by inventing plans for its defence, and then demand that Mr. Lincoln should at once bring the troubles to a termination. They point to the felony of Twiggs and the perjury of Wigfall not as crimes, but as the evidences of unpopularity of the Republican party and the inability of a Republican administration to maintain and vindicate the laws. With such arguments, the workingmen of the North are sought to be seduced from their adherence to principle, and again induced to support the old measures and corrupt men of the Democratic party. If it asserted that the laws are be enforced, at once the cry of coercion is proclaimed - and when humanity would seem to dictate the evacuation of a fort, a howl is raised that the government is being forced from its position, and that `the Republican party has been compelled to back down.' Let us not mistake these counter attitudes and variable declarations of the Democratic press of the whole country. They not only illustrate the inconsistency of those engaged in them, but it will shortly be proved by the action of these very men that they were as much accessories before the denoument of treason, as they have been aiders and abettors since it has achieved a sort of defiant success. This must be so, because the laws cannot much longer remain unvindicated and we as a government expect to preserve our position before the nations of the world. And when the blow is struck for the right, and the administration of Abraham Lincoln wields the power conferred upon it by the Constitution for the preservation of the Union, the opposition with which it will be compelled to contend will not alone be the secessionists at the South, but the hordes of removed Democratic officials and traitors at the North, who, with the loss of office, have sacrificed all love of country, and are now sworn and ready to increase the strength of slavery at the South, as well as destroy every vestige of civil and religious liberty at the North. If this is not to be the result of the present crisis, in case secession should succeed and revolution be acknowledged as the common right of those who choose to object to both statue and common law, then we have mistaken the objects of the Democratic press and the tendencies of Democratic leaders for the last four years."
"The delay in the aggression of the secessionists and the pause in the action of the Federal administration, have left all sections of the country in a state of perplexity, in which they cannot exist much longer and preserve their equanimity. With all due respect to the administration we now think, with thousands of earnest Republicans, that it is time some definite policy was proclaimed, so that the country may prepare itself for any emergency which might grow out of such declaration of design or action. If secession has arrayed itself in impregnable defenses, and it is no longer possible to maintain the federal authority in the seceded States, the States that yet cling to the old confederation should be apprised of the fact and proper means at once taken for the safety and preservation of what remains of the Union. It is no longer just to deny that the Union has been dissolved, because the facts of dissolution are too apparent in the insults which are daily heaped on our nationality by the States that are antagonized. To all intents and purposes, the Union is dissolved. The theory of dissolution was fully established by John C. Calhoun before he died. Its practical realization began six years ago - and now that it has burst upon the country and the world with all its force and fury, it behooves us no to shrink from any of the terrors which it presents, but to meet it boldly, and, if possible, cope with and conquer all the difficulties which it has cast in our way.
For many years, there has been a bitter antipathy growing up between the South and the North. This feeling was produced entirely by jealously, because under the influence of free labor, one section excelled the other, so immensely in augmented interest and growth, that political, financial and business inferiority stared them in the face as their inevitable doom. The admission of new States with free institutions as the basis of their government, did not assist in allaying this feeling, while the result of the late census has unmistakably fixed the political inferiority and subordination of the slave States, in any union of commonwealths imbued with freedom and free labor. Southern statesmen understand and appreciate this condition of affairs, and have long since beheld their doom in the mighty progress of free labor, and consequent destruction of slavery in North America.
Why is peaceable secession not practicable? Why, if the people of the slave States are determined to organize a government of their own, should the people of the free States object? When rebellion first showed itself in South Carolina, it was within the power of the federal authorities to have reduced the rebels to subjection - but as the federal government was then in the hands of those who sympathized with secession, the movement was permitted to go on until it has become one of formidable proportions and strength. War with the seceded States will not bring them back into the Union - it will not inspire them with fresh allegiance to their old attachments, nor can its results be other than sanguinary and mournful to one, and, perhaps, fatal to both parties. Why, then, should not the cotton States be allowed to remain where they are, adrift among the nations of the world, until they discover their own folly, and of their own volition seek again an association in a union with their old friends and neighbors? Such a recognition of peaceable secession would not increase the danger and difficulties by which we are already surrounded, nor would it affect any more than they have been affected, the destiny and development of the free States. In the present juncture, a resort to arms seems utterly impracticable. And yet the complication of affairs seems so completely to perplex those who are without official information on the subject, that we most patiently wait until the wisdom of the administration has devised some plan to rescue the country from its impending ruin."
"When the impartial pen of the historian is invoked to trace the transaction of the present to their true source and responsibility, he will be compelled to discharge a duty which will leave a stain of dark and irrefaceable crime on the name of the Democratic party, its measures and its men. However we may endeavor to deal leniently with the errors of individuals, and close our eyes to the common faults and frailties of our nature - there are yet degrees of crime and extents of excuse which must not be permitted to pass unnoticed or uncondemned. They will not be permitted to do so, particularly when they seek to thrust suffering on the generation that governs or entail misery and sorrow on that which is to come after us, to inhabit and posses the land. All taht we were as a government, so far as prestige and political influence are concerned, we inherited from the wisdom of those who bathed their virtues and their patriotism in their own blood, and became martyrs to their faith, with the holy resolution and purpose of creating a government which would end the martyrdom of patriotism, and establish forever the civil and religious rights of mankind. Those who formed and framed and labored for the establishment of free institutions on this hemisphere, never dreamed that the blow which would destroy their cherished object and holy purpose, would be dealt by the hands of a portion of the American people themselves. They never imagined that treason would be hatched in the capital of the republic they poured out their blood to organize. If the blow ever did come, and treason plotted to subvert the liberty of the American people, in their opinion it would come from abroad, and be hatched by those who never enjoyed and therefor could not appreciate the blessings of free institutions. But in their confidence in those who were to come after them, the statesmen and heroes of the revolution were mistaken. Instead of the blow that is to destroy us, coming from abroad, it is dealt from at home, by those most benefitted, and the treason with which it is clutching the nation by the throat, was concocted by the very men who were sworn to its preservation and protection. This is no idle assertion. The history of the past proves the origin of the treason, while the transactions of the present are daily developing the designs of those engaged in this treacherous revolution.
The cause of all our troubles is traced to the subject of slavery. In the infancy of the nation, and while we as a people were yet dependent colonies, slavery was introduced. After the revolution, and after the formation of the first Constitution, every christian man and patriot in the land admitted the evil of the institution, and consulted for a plan to ensure its gradual extinction. Such was the purpose of Jefferson and Adams, of Madison and Monroe, and on this idea of the abolishment of slavery the leading men of the past looked to the future for the grandest and holiest realization of the conception of free institutions. But as politics became a business, and the hunt for office a trade in which the worst passions and propensities of men were invoked and displayed, every prejudice which could be flattered and used for selfish purposes, was at once cultivated and fostered. The Democratic party as o reorganized to counteract the purpose of effecting the gradual extinction of slavery. Its legislation has all tended towards such an achievement. During the years of its success, its efforts to prevent the protection of free labor were in keeping with its purpose to consolidate and spread the institution of slavery over all our territory, and constitute it a recognised element in the government of the country. Not satisfied with incorporating slavery in the domestic policy of the government, a foreign war was provoked, in order to satisfy its voracity and cater to its demands. And herein is the true source of all our difficulties. As long as the South maintained the balance of power, as long as they were able to control the government, to manage its departments, the machinery of legislation was undisturbed, and no section complained of the aggressions of the other. The breeding pens of Virginia were never more flourishing than when their owners were permitted to sit in high places of power - nor were South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida and Louisiana, fearful of the invasion of nay of their privileges or the disregard of nay right, when the national legislature refused to recognise free labor, or persisted in pouring into the lap of slavery the treasure of the whole country. By such acts and such legislation, the Democratic party were able to hold the government of the country in their own (obscured) because it made the South a unit in their favor. They succeeded in polluting the minds of the people of the North with false notions of monopoly, whenever protection to labor was broached, until the very labor which was thus sought to be fostered, suffered itself to be bound in its service and dragged into the depths of Democratic misery and destitution. For forty years all our struggles have been for slavery. The forcible and fraudulent annexation of Texas was for the same purpose. The bloody and costly war with Mexico aimed at conferring benefits on the same hellish influence - and to day we stand on the verge of a conflict even more sanguinary and far more expensive to curb the lusts and larcenies of this identical institution.
The historian will deal impartially with these facts. As long as the Democratic party was able to protect and maintain slavery, the advocates and supporters of that evil were also advocates and supporters of Democracy. As long as the Democratic party was powerful for slavery propagandism, the entire South was devoted to Democracy. But when the Democratic party became demoralized, when its leaders at the South assumed all the regal arrogance of aristocratic power, and the masses at the North suddenly changed their faith in its purity and purposes, then its southern adherents suddenly ceased in their devotion, the party itself was divided into angry factions and the cry of revolution and succession became as popular as free trade and direct taxation had before been audaciously insisted upon. No sane man will dare to declare that the revolution at the South is the result of any fear of political invasion from the North - and only those who are insane will deny that it is the effect of northern development, progress and improvement on the last relic of barbarianism that yet remains on this continent, in the shape of African slavery. It is the struggle of the Democratic party to maintain slavery. The effort of a decayed and dissolute aristocracy, under the name and in the disguise of a corrupt Democracy, to maintain its power in this government for the purpose of triumphing in its own base and selfish objects.
Let not the American people, the laboring man and mechanic, be misled, therefore, in the contest which is about to be waged. The conflict has been forced on them, and the struggle will be for their dearest rights. Under any circumstances, war seemed inevitable, and we had better have it written of us hereafter that we were willing to perish in a contest for life and liberty, than that we supinely submitted to our fate, and lost both liberty and life."
"The civilized and Christian world must judge the merits of the contest which has been forced on the people of one by the revolutionists of another section of the country, and the decision made by that tribunal will forever hereafter affect the development and destiny of the contending parties in this warfare. The revolution at the South has no parallel in the history of any revolution since civil governments were formed for the protection of mankind. All other revolutions aimed at the elevation of the morality of men, and sought the achievement of an equality among the masses of the people calculated to promote their happiness, prosperity and power. Even in feudal contests, which were waged at the expense of all the holiest ties of blood and society, the result contemplated was the vindication of the rights of all men, and not the debasement or corruption of any particular race. So with the French revolution, the bloodiest picture on the page of time. During all that awful struggle, when Paris ran with blood, and France bowed her head with mighty agony, above the rage and the passion of the mob, the serene form of Liberty was invoked to preside over the bloody orgies of their mistaken zeal. The revolutions of Poland and Hungary, and the fitful struggles of ireland, all tended to that one object, freedom. All revolutions, in fact, were waged solely for the establishment of liberty in some degree elevating to the masses. All civil wars, too, for whatever purpose in reality carried on, were proclaimed by the belligerents to be for some good of elevating influence, or some right that extended the blessings and benefits of civil and religious liberty. The exception to all these struggles for right is the rebellion in the South, sought to be dignified with the name of rebellion by its participants and sympathizers. Instead of being a revolution to vindicate any right of humanity or religion, it is only a riot, made formidable by the neglect of past Administration, to crush such right, and inaugurate in its stead, power to degrade and enslave the human body and soul. However those who sympathize with this treason may argue that the Southern people are struggling for an equality in the Union, the real design of the conflict so far as the South is concerned, is to make slave equal to free labor, and to elevate the institution of slavery itself, not only as an element in the power of the government, but as a specifically recognized influence in its legislation and diplomacy. Thus, the conflict is reduced to the negative positions, that while the free States are using their influence against slavery, the Slave States are invoking a like influence against treason. We cannot unite these influences by compromises, because their antagonism is derived from a higher power than that of man, and will continue to go on until one yields to reason and humanity, or the other is overcome by treason or cowardice.
It is useless, longer then, to conceal the real merits of this contest. The seceded States have themselves fixed this merit, by announcing slavery to be the fundamental principle of their government. They have declared that slavery should of right constitute the element of all government, and in obedience to this declaration, are now making war on the nearest and freest government in the world. It is that they are contending force - and against this, we of the free States are now forced to struggle. If the government yields to the treason, its heresies will constitute hereafter the government - but if the people of all sections of the Union sustain the government in its efforts to arrest this rebellion, neither its heresies or its atrocities will ever hereafter be again attempted."