proofs of their guilt as black and damning as that of "the rebel angels." The modest author of the following book has been impelled to come forth from his loved retirement, as a witness against them. It has been our privilege to hear, from the manuscript, the greater part of what he now offers to the public. We have advised the publication of it, because, though much to the same effect has been given in sundry speeches and newspaper articles, we have seen nothing so thorough, so radical. He has indeed gone to the root of the matter. Everything in this book is racy, evidently the result of the author's own investigations; the product of his own thought. Some parts of it are wholly original. The reader will find in it a few facts more startling than any other explorer has brought us from the arcana of American despotism. He has shown us again, that "the children of this world have been wiser in their day and generation than the children of light." He has shown us that "the Barons of the South," as the illustrious John Adams first called them in 1776, have, almost from the beginning, hated democratic principles and purposes. They have foreseen and forefelt the utter incompatibility of a democratic government with the permanence of their "peculiar institution," that worst system of tyranny,— and therefore they early determined to rule or to ruin the Republic; to change its character; to make it a ruthless despotism under a better name; or else to break away from it, rend it in twain, tear it in pieces. All this is made to appear on the following pages. We earnestly commend them to the attentive perusal of every one who is willing to know how implacable is the temper, how impious the purpose, of the leaders of this great Rebellion. SYRACUSE, January 15, 1862. 129 136 139 II. THE REBELLION VULNERABLE THROUGH SLAVERY III. IMPRACTICABLE POLICY OF THE GOVERNMENT. -PRO- PART I. OUR TWO SYSTEMS OF SOCIETY. "IT cannot be denied that in a community spreading over a large extent of territory, and politically founded upon the principles proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, but differing so widely in the elements of their social condition, that the inhabitants of one half the territory are wholly free, and those of the other half divided into masters and slaves, DEEP if not IRRECONCILABLE COLLISIONS OF INTEREST must abound. The question WHETHER SUCH A COMMUNITY CAN EXIST UNDER ONE COMMON GOVERNMENT, is a subject of profound philosophical speculation in theory. Whether it can continue long to exist, is a question to be solved only by the experiment now making by the people of this Union, under that national compact, the Constitution of the United States." -JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, 1833. "The whole politics of rival States consist in checking the growth of one another."- MACHIAVEL. 1 * |