throughout the South as a signal victory. It is also worthy of note, that, from the beginning of the Government, Southern statesmen have refused to allow slavery to go north of that line, 36° 30, in the Territories; and that the Northwestern Territory, embracing all the Western States north of the line, was made inviolably free soil by the demand of Virginia, through Mr. Jefferson, and by the support of Southern votes.

We may pursue this inquiry through all the history of the past, and we shall find that all these topics of complaint against the Government, which have furnished themes for popular discourse and irritation of the Southern mind, and which, for more than a quarter of a century, have been urged as incentives to disunion, are but pretexts employed as lures to entrap the ignorant, or as devices to stimulate the sedition of men who welcome any thing that may give plausibility to a foregone purpose of revolt.

The pursuit of independence by these confederated States has a very different aim from the redress of such shallow griefs as these.

Whoever shall be able hereafter to reveal the secret history of those various conclaves which have held counsel on the repeated attempts to invade and conquer,—or, as the phrase was, liberate Cuba; whoever shall unfold the schemes of seizing Nicaragua, of aiding revolution in Mexico, of possessing Sonora, will make some pretty sure advances in disclosing the true pathway to the sources of this rebellion. The organization of the Knights of the Golden Circle, and their spread over the country; their meetings and transactions; who managed them and set them on to do their appointed work,-whoever shall penetrate into the midnight which veiled this order from view, will also open an authentic chapter in the history of this outbreak.

There was a great scheme of dominion in this plot. The fancy of certain Southern politicians was dazed with a vision of Empire. Years have been rolling on while this brilliant scheme was maturing in their private councils, and at intervals

startling the nation by some unexpected eruption. The design, which lay too deep in darkness to be penetrated by the uninitiated, occasionally rose to the surface in some bold and rash adventure, which either the vigilance of Government, or the imperfect means of success which the necessity of concealment imposed upon it, rendered abortive. The Cuban expediitions miscarried; the Sonora failed; the Nicaragua forays were defeated, all these chiefly by the careful watch of the Government. Large sums of money were squandered in these fruitless adventures, and many lives were lost. Worse than these mishaps, eager hopes were disappointed and long indulged dreams dissipated. It was found that the Union was in the way; that the National Government was the impediment ; and that as long as the South was bound to obey that Government, these cherished schemes would be always certain to miscarry. This experience turned the hostility of thwarted ambition against the Union, and directed the thoughts of these agents of mischief towards its destruction.

Then came the next movement. There is, I think, a het ter foundation than mere rumor for saying that overtures were made, before the rebellion broke out, to the Emperor of the French for support and patronage in the scheme; that a very alluring picture was presented to him of a great Southern Confederacy, to embrace the land of cotton, of sugar, of coffee, of the most precious tobaccoes, and of the choicest fruits, of the most valuable timber, and the richest mines,-comprehending the Gulf States, Cuba, St. Domingo, and other islands, Mexico, Central America, and perhaps reaching even beyond into the borders of South America,-a great tropical and semi-tropical paradise of unbounded affluence of product, secured by an impregnable monopoly created by Nature. This large domain was to be organized into one confederate Government, and provided with the cheapest and most docile and submissive of all labor; its lands were to be parcelled into principalities, and landlords were to revel in the riches of Aladdin's lamp. This was the grand idea which the Emperor was

solicited to patronize with his protection, for which he was to be repaid in treaty arrangements, by which France should enjoy a free trade in the products of French industry, and precedence in gathering the first fruits of all this wealth of culture. Certainly a very dazzling lure this, to the good will of the Emperor !

It is said the Emperor was quite captivated with the first view of this brilliant project, but on riper deliberation was brought to a pause. The scheme, he discovered, stood on one leg the whole structure rested on slavery, which was much too ricketty a support to win favor in this nineteenth century with the shrewdest of European statesmen. The plot was "too light for the counterpoise of so great an opposition." The structure might last a few years, but very soon it would tumble down and come to nought. And so, it is whispered, This is a bit of secret

the Emperor declined the venture. history which time may or may not verify. From some inklings of that day which escaped into open air, I believe it true. We heard various boastings, in the summer of 1860, of French support to the threatened separation, and there were agents in Europe negotiating for it. During all that preliminary period there was a great deal said in the South about reviving the slave-trade. When the Emperor refused, this was suddenly dropped and England was then looked to as the ally in the coming revolt. Abolition England was to be won by another strategy. The Montgomery Convention asserted a clause in the Confederate Constitution forbidding the slavetrade, and, oddly enough for a government founded on the central idea of slavery, the commissioners who represented it in England were authorized to assure the British Minister that it was really the old Government which was fighting to perpetuate slavery, while the new one was only seeking free trade; thereby gently insinuating a disinterested indifference on the slave question, which might ultimately come into full accord with England on that subject. These revelations stand in strange contrast with the popular theme that has

rushed so many into the rebellion. As the matter now rests, the rebel Government has quite platform enough to be as proslavery or as anti-slavery as its European negotiations may require; and if these should utterly fail, there is nothing in the constitutional provision to interrupt the African slave-trade a single day. For what is that provision worth in a region where neither courts nor juries would execute the law?

While this grand idea of tropical extension was seething in the brain of the leaders, and their hopes of fruition were vivid, the plan was to confine the revolt to the Cotton States, —or, at least, to give the Border States a very inferior rôle in the programme. They might come in when all was adjusted, but were to have no share in the primary organization. Every one remembers how these Border States were flouted in the beginning, and told they were not fit to be consulted, and that the only advantage they could bring to the Southern Confederacy was that of serving as a frontier to prevent the escape of slaves. But when the original plan was found to be a failure, the views of the managers were changed; the Border States became indispensable to any hope of success, and the most active agencies of persuasion, force and fraud were set in motion to bring them in. How mournfully did it strike upon the heart of the nation when Virginia, in the lead of this career of submission, sank to the humiliation of pocketing the affront that had been put upon her, and consented to accept a position which nothing but the weakness of her new comrades induced them to allow her!

Since the hope of this broader dominion has come to an end, the rebellion is still persistently pursued for the accomplishment of its secondary objects. There is still, doubtless, some residuary expectation that, even without foreign patronage in the event of success, this desire of extension of territory may in time be gratified; but it is no longer the chief object of pursuit. The pride of the South, its resentment, its rage, are all now enlisted in pushing forward to whatever consummation they may imagine to be attainable. They now insist on

independence from the very hatred their disappointments have engendered. But they seek it, too, as the only method left for the maintenance of that class domination which they have ever enjoyed, and which they are now unwilling to surrender.

LETTER VII.

REBELLION.

JANUARY, 1864.

In the preceding letters I have had occasion to say much of Secession and Revolution, and to show the different categories in which they respectively place the war waged by the South. It requires no great insight to perceive the relation which these two ideas, considered as motives of conduct, have to the question of mere right and wrong in this conflict. In that view they have a notable significance, and stand very wide apart. I recur to them now to make some remarks on that point, and to note the alternate use the partisans of the South have made of these two topics as persuasives in aid of their project to destroy the Union.

By the opportune use of both, as occasion favored, they have increased the popularity of their cause. They would have failed if they had been compelled to present it to their people singly, upon either of the two. Neither secession alone, nor revolution alone, would have found that undivided support which is essential to success. In that storm of excitement raised by their chiefs at the beginning of the strife, and in the flurry of that vainglorious, and,. I might say, insolent spirit of defiance, that contemptuous disparagement of the North as a selfish, vulgar, and craven people, over whom they promised an easy victory and a short war,-the Southern masses were hurried along into the irrevocable step of rebellion. Few stopped to weigh the excuse for such a step, but listened with willing ear to every pretext, however false or feeble, in its justifi