cope of heaven with their laudations! "You are violating the Constitution!" "On the contrary, I am restoring its authority!" “But you are assailing Slavery!" "That is because Slavery is assailing the Constitution: I am obliged to strangle this serpent in order to achieve my task." "But the Constitution gives you no authority to touch Slavery." "Neither does it give Slavery any authority to touch me: yet you see it aims to crush me, and one or the other must die." But, what's the good of the Constitution if we're to have no Slavery for it to guarantee?" Ah! there God extorts the secret! To that infamous complexion does our idolatry come at last. All this vociferous laudation of the Constitution but a decent pretext for serving Slavery!

66

Yes, the Constitution — carefully framed as it had been to promote our well-being- came near proving our destruction. Long before the war, it threatened our ruin as good men thought. Bearing the interpretation which the Southern oligarchy had given it, it meant three things,- Bondage to the Blacks-Vassalage to the North - Privilege to the Chivalry. Worshipped in this character, it bred a monstrous idolatry, more cruel than that of Moloch, more demoralizing than that of Venus. The surviving servants of the true God-looking on the abomination said, doubtingly, "Can a nation apostatize to this, and live?"

The war being inaugurated, it seemed that the Constitution stood in the way of all loyal effort; it prohibited the Government from defending itself— from raising armies, or seizing spies, or arresting, by any means, the progress of our political dissolution. It seemed favorable only to the Rebels who had openly spurned it. A Constitution thus construed, with a vigilant faction to magnify all alleged violations of it, became a fearful incumbrance. It had been meant for a respirator, but was converted into a gag. The chart of the ship was being used to betray it to the buccaneers. But, providentially, the course of events has exposed the sophisms of those who affected to teach us the meaning of the Constitution. We no longer deem it binding upon us to receive our sailing orders

from those who have conspired to wreck the ship, or from any mutinous ally who may infest the forecastle. We can not expel the conviction that those who wink at the overthrow of the supreme law of the land in the interest of Slavery, and who can not pardon the slightest infringement of its letter in the interest of Liberty and National Salvation, are wanting in some of the qualities essential to a dispassionate judgment of the acts of this Government.

III. Another rock that endangered the Ship was the temporizing policy of the Border States. At the breaking out of the war, those States affected an attitude of neutrality. Their public opinion was divided on the question of the hour. In every State except Delaware, the majority of the politicians, and the wealthier slaveholders, gravitated toward the Southern Confederacy. But the majority of the people were attached to the Union, the old Union, in which Southern interests were paramount. Their loyalty was conditional, exacting, precarious. They wanted the Union preserved, but they questioned the right of coercion. They wished the Rebellion subdued, but they disliked to take arms against their seditious neighbors. They were the friends of the Federal Government, but they were opposed to the Federal Armies crossing their soil.

Thus the Border States were, practically, allies of the Confederacy. The policy they chose to adopt, shielded their disloyal conspirators while intriguing for the Rebellion, and arrested the arm of the Government in its effort to vindicate its authority. Out of the Border States issued two currents of influence one applauding the traitors, the other admonishing the Government and those currents blended to aug

inent the Rebellion.

But never was a policy, dictated by expediency, more fearfully avenged by justice. It was the hope of those States, that an attitude of neutrality might turn the tide of war from their territories. But the very evil which they selfishly strove to avert, came upon them in all its rigor. The war has swept

over them like fire over a prairie. Had they taken, at the outset, an attitude of firm, unconditional loyalty, the scene of the contest must have been located in the Gulf States. As their interest in Slavery was comparatively small, so the struggle for the perpetuity of the system would have touched them lightly. But their timid, temporizing, querulous policy allowed the Rebellion to pass the Potomac and sweep up the Ohio, and to devote their own soil to the blight of battle.

Yet such was the means chosen by providence to regenerate the Border States. The virus of Slavery, which, in the beginning, led the party leaders and large proprietors to affiliate with the Rebellion, and which neutralized the loyalty of the people, has become almost burned out by the war; insomuch that devotion to the Union, and abhorrence of Slavery, are now the supreme passions of those States. Two years ago,

the Government felt obliged to weigh all its acts, and to shape almost its whole policy, with reference to their effect upon the Border States; nw those States yield the palm of loyalty to none, either at the North, the East, or the West. Two years ago, it was supposed that a decree of Emancipation would utterly alienate the Border States; but now the decree of Emancipation receives, at their hands, its warmest welcome. Maryland has recently declared for Emancipation; Missouri took the road of freedom still earlier; Delaware, with only eighteen hundred slaves, will soon be disenthralled; and Western Virginia, as well as Kentucky, is gravitating to the same goal. The aggregate value of slave property in the four Border States, amounted, in 1860, to about $430,000,000, or nearly one-third of the total wealth of those States: but such is the force and swelling volume of the popular feeling, that it will, probably, within five years, wash away the last vestiges of Slavery in those communities, even if not accelerated by offers of compensation.

Thus the anomalous policy of the Border States, insidious and alarming as it was at the commencement of the war, has been providentially overruled for the triumph of Liberty, and changed into an element of national power.

IV. Another rock that seemed liable to wreck the REPUBLIC was Partyism. The Democratic party had been dominant for many years. It had swayed the fortunes of the country, shaped the policy of the Government, and impregnated the nation with its spirit. It had been able, sagacious, and unscrupulous, trained in the school of finesse, accustomed to the most skillful combination of political forces, familiar with success and enamored of power. The pliant servant of the Slave Oligarchy, it has gradually alienated the confidence and lost the support of the Northern people. Its main strength lay in the South. Defeated at the polls, its Southern wing numbering three-quarters of the party - bolted from the Union, and fired the train which they supposed would blow up the Government.

The surviving fraction of the party, left standing upon Northern ground, was in a dilemina. It was not prepared to go with its Southern brethren, to the extreme of arming against the flag; for it had its being in loyal States, and it was not unanimous in the desire to ruin its country. Neither was it prepared to support the Government, frankly and cordially; for, in that case, it must co-operate with its late political rivals, to humiliate its recent political friends. Never was a party, or the attenuated fragment of a party, placed in so embarrassing a position. To espouse the Rebellion, was to incur infamy, and possibly other penalties to which crude men are more sensitive: besides, the masses did not need the admonition of a possible halter, to deter them from taking that step the breath of rising events, acting on their minimum of patriotism, was enough. On the other hand, to espouse the Government was to master their strongest prejudices, and to display a magnanimity almost superior to human nature; for, to aid the country in its hour of supreme danger, was to strengthen the very party they had fought at the polls.

Thus situated, this vestige of the Lemocratic party stood passive while the first wave of loyal enthusiasm swept over the North. As a party, it assumed no decisive attitude; or, if any, an attitude of criticism-a judicial attitude. Many

of its numbers, however, on their private responsibility, rallied to the Federal flag, emulating the largest patriotism, and rendering the most signal services. Among those who challenge the admiration of posterity by having disdained partyism, and by having evinced a magnanimous zeal for the public welfare, in that critical birth-hour of the New Age, it is a high pleasure to mention Douglas, Butler, Hunter, Scott, Sprague, Dix, Grant, Rosecrans and Burnside. Others, obedient to their base instinct, began to intrigue for the Rebellion - some of them, there is too much reason to suspect, wearing the Federal uniform to cloak their iniquitous designs.

out.

As the contest proceeded, some fruitful facts came clearly If the war was to go on through Mr. Lincoln's administration, the Southern wing of the "Democracy" would become hopelessly alienated — Slavery would receive its death-blow — and the Republican party would be henceforth the national party. This was manifest to the Democratic leaders. Two classes of Democrats looked at the prospect with very different emotions. The class in whom patriotism was the ruling sentiment, accepted it as an historical necessity. They bowed to the decree of events, saying, "Let our Party die; but ever live, our Country." But the class in whom partizanship was the supreme feeling, rebelled against the tendency of affairs. The hope of office almost dying within them, they grew ripe for desperate measures. They laid their scheming heads together, and set the dormant wires of intrigue in motion, saying, "Let our country slide; but ever live, our Party!"

The task which those men addressed themselves to achieve, was this: To arrest the War; to bring the Government to its knees before the Rebellion; to restore the Rebel leaders to their seats in Congress, unpunished and unsubdued; to rescue Slavery from its impending doom, and to re-establish the Democratic party in the North and in the South: a scheme of magnificent proportions and unparalleled infamy.'

The means they resorted to were worthy of the scheme.

1 Speech of Gov. Seymour, July 4th, 1863; N. Y. Express, July 13th; Herald, July 21st and 31st.