even (as in the case of North Carolina and Arkansas) those which had not seceded—was a peaceful, regular, legitimate, legal procedure; while to resist such spoliation and maintain the right of the Union to possess and control the property it had created and hitherto enjoyed, was unjustifiable aggression and unprovoked war. Mr. Lincoln (said Mr. Davis) had no constitutional right to issue "the declaration of war against this Confederacy which has prompted me to convoke you." It was his duty to have quietly let the Confederates help themselves, by virtue of shot and shell, to such portions of the prop Mr. JEFFERSON DAVIS, in his Spe- | the Union, in their respective States cial Message to his Congress,' wherein | he asserts that war has been declared against the Confederacy by President Lincoln's Proclamation of April 15th, heretofore given, with more plausibility asserts that the Democratic party of the Free States stands publicly committed to the principles which justify the secession and confederation of the States owning his sway, by its reiterated affirmation and adoption of "the Resolutions of '98 and '99," and that the whole country had ratified this committal by large majorities, in the reëlection as President of Mr. Jefferson, in the first election of Mr. Madison, and in the election of Gen. Pierce. Assum-erty of the Union as they should see ing this as a basis, Mr. Davis had no difficulty in convincing those whom he more immediately addressed, that, for his confederates to surprise, capture, or otherwise obtain, through the treachery of their custodians, the forts, arsenals, armories, custom-houses, mints, sub-treasuries, etc., etc., of fit to touch and take. In fact, this whole Message, like several which succeeded it, evinces the consciousness of its author that he had no longer to square his assertions by what was regarded, out of the Confederacy, as historic truth, or his deductions by what the civilized world had estab party of the United States repeated, in its successful canvass of 1836, the declaration, made in numerous previous political contests, that it would faithfully abide by and uphold the prin ciples laid down in the Kentucky and Virginia Legislatures of [1798 and] 1799, and that it adopts those principles as constituting one of the main foundations of its political creed." lished as the dictates of human rea- | fulfilled. When Mr. Davis was next' son. Thus, he does not hesitate to assert that "In the Inaugural Address delivered by President Lincoln, in March last, he asserts a maxim, which he plainly deems to be undeniable, that the theory of the Constitution requires, in all cases, that the majority shall govern."**** "The climate and soil of the Northern States soon proved unpropitious to the continuance of Slave Labor; while, the reverse being the case at the South, *** the Northern States consulted their own interests by selling their Slaves to the South and prohibiting Slavery within their limits." Now, not one-fifth of the slaves held in the Northern States, just before or at the time they respectively abolished Slavery, were sold to the South-as hundreds of them, still living, can bear witness; nor is it true that Slavery was ever proved unsuited to or unprofitable in the North, in the judgment of her slaveholders. Had the slaveholding caste been as omnipotent here as in the South, controlling parties, politics, and the press, Slavery would have continued to this day. It was by the non-slaveholding possessors of influence and power, here as everywhere else, that Slavery was assailed, exposed, reprobated, and ultimately overthrown. No class ever yet discovered that aught which ministered so directly and powerfully to its own luxury, sensuality, indolence, and pride, as Slavery does to those of the slaveholders, was either unjust, pernicious, or unprofitable. With greater truth and plausibility, Mr. Davis assured his Congress that "There is every reason to believe that, at no distant day, other States, identical in political principles and community of interest with those which you represent, will join this Confederacy." called to address his Congress-which had meantime adjourned from Montgomery to Richmond-in announcing the transfer of the Executive departments likewise to the new capital, he said: "Gentlemen of the Congress of the Confeder ate States of America: "My Message addressed to you at the commencement of the last session contained such full information of the state of the Confederacy as to render it unnecessary that I should now do more than call your attention during the recess, and the matters connected to such important facts as have occurred with the public defense. accession of new members to our Confedera"I have again to congratulate you on the tion of free and equally sovereign States. Our beloved and honored brethren of North Carolina and Tennessee have consummated the action foreseen and provided for at your last session; and I have had the gratification of announcing by Proclamation, in conformity with the law, that these States were admitted into the Confederacy. The people of Virginia also, by a majority previously unknown in our history, have ratified the action of her Convention uniting her fortunes with ours. The States of Arkansas, North Carolina, and Virginia, have likewise adopted the permanent Constitution of the Con federate States; and no doubt is entertained of its adoption by Tennessee, at the election to be held early in next month." The Confederacy having thus attained its full proportions prior to any serious collision between its armies and those of the Union, we may now properly consider and compare the relative strength of the opposing parties about to grapple in mortal combat. I. The total population of the United States, as returned by the Census of 1860, somewhat exceeded Thirtyone Millions, whereof the Free States, with all the territories, contained Nineteen, and the Slave States, including the District of Columbia, over Twelve Millions. As the Free States all ad EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY IN OUR STRUGGLE. 499 came mere geographical designations of portions of the nation 'one and indivisible.' Italy, through her at hered to the Union, while, of the Slave States, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri' did not unite with the Confederacy, the pre-length half-realized aspirations of so ponderance of population in the adhering over that of the seceded States was somewhat more than two to one. The disparity in wealth between the contending parties was at least equal to this; so that there was plausibility in the claim of the Confederates to that sympathy which the generous usually extend to the weaker party in a life-and-death struggle. In Manufactures, Commerce, Shipping, etc., the preponderance was immensely on the side of the Union. II. The prestige of regularity, of legitimacy, and of whatever the Old World implies by the comprehensive term 'Order,' was likewise on the side of the Union. The Confederacy appeared as a disturber of preëxisting arrangements, and thus of the general peace. Its fundamental theories of State Sovereignty, Right of Secession, etc., were utter novelties to the mass of mankind, and were at war with the instincts and prepossessions of nearly all who could understand them. The greatness and security, wealth and power, of England were based on the supersedure of the Heptarchy by the Realm, and on the conversion of Scotland and Ireland, respectively, from jealous and hostile neighbors into integral portions of the British commonwealth. France, feeble and distracted while divided into great feudatories, became strong and commanding from the hour that these were absorbed into the power and influence of the monarchy, and Burgundy, Picardy, Anjou, etc., be 'Kentucky and Missouri are claimed as having done so; and, hence, were both represented, many weary centuries- Germany, still in fragments, in defiance of her ardent hopes and wishes, the imposing and venerable anarchy that Voltaire pronounced her, four generations back-Poland, through her lamentable partition-and nearly every great calamity which modern history had taught mankind to deplore-protested against such disintegrations as the Confederacy had initiated, and not less against the principles on which they were justified. And especially did the Democracy of Europe-the party of Progress and Reform of whatever country-instinctively revolt against doctrines and practices which tended unmistakably backward to the ages alike of national and of individual impotence, wherein peoples were weak, though castes were strong; to the ages of barbarism and of feudalism, wherein nobles and chieftains were mighty, but laws and magistrates of small account. The Democracy of Europe were never for one moment misled or confused by the Confederates' pretensions as to reserved rights and constitutional liberty. Their instinct at once recognized their deadly foe through all his specious disguises. Men who had, as conspirators and revolutionists, been tenanting by turns the dungeons and dodging the gibbets of Divine Right' from boyhood, repudiated with loathing any affiliation with this rebellion; and no word of cheer ever reached the ears of its master-spirits from Kossuth, Mazzini, from an early day, in the Confederate Congress. But the claim is baseless and impudent. Victor Hugo, Ledru Rollin, Louis | the North and East had known very little' of war but by hearsay since the peace which secured our independence, eighty years ago. Blanc, Garibaldi, or any other of those who, defying the vengeance of despots, have consecrated their lives and sacrificed personal enjoyment to the championship of the Rights of Man. III. The Confederates had vastly the advantage in the familiarity of their people with the use of arms," and in their addiction to and genius for the art of war. The Northern youth of 1860 were not nearly so familiar with the use of the hunter's rifle or fowling-piece as were their ancestors of 1770. The density of our population had expelled desirable game almost entirely from all the NewEngland States but Maine; in the prairie States, it rapidly disappears before the advancing wave of civilized settlement and cultivation. Our Indian wars of the present century have nearly all been fought on our western and south-western borders; our last war with Great Britain was condemned as unwise and unnecessary by a large proportion of the Northern people; so was the war upon Mexico: so that it may be fairly said that, while the South and South-West had been repeatedly accustomed to hostilities during the present century, A Southern gentleman, writing from Augusta, Ga., in February, 1861, said: "Nine-tenths of our youth go constantly armed; and the common use of deadly weapons is quite disregarded. No control can be exercised over a lad after he is fourteen or fifteen years of age. He then becomes Mr.' so-and-so, and acknowledges no master. The street-fights, duels, etc., so prominent among the peculiar institutions' of the South, doubtless conduced to the ready adaptation of her whites to a state of war. 0 Pollard, in his "Southern History" of our struggle, smartly, if not quite accurately, says: "In the war of 1812, the North furnished 58,552 soldiers; the South 96.812-making a majority of 37,030 in favor of the South. Of the number furnished by the North IV. The Rebels had a decided advantage in the fact that, on the main question underlying the great issue they had made up the question of upholding, strengthening, extending, and perpetuating Slavery, or (on the other hand) restricting, confining, weakening it, with a view to its ultimate extinction-they had the active sympathy of a decided majority of the American people. The vote for President in 1860" had shown that scarcely more than two-fifths of the American People were even so far hostile to Slavery to wish its farther diffusion arrested. Had political action been free in the Slave States, they would probably have swelled Mr. Lincoln's poll to fully Two Millions; but, on the other hand, the hopeless distraction and discouragement of the pro-Slavery forces so paralyzed effort on that side, by demonstrating its futility, as seriously to diminish the anti-Lincoln vote. Had there been but one instead of three pro-Slavery tickets in the field, its vote in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts furnished. .3,110 897 387 SLAVERY THE RELIGION OF THE SOUTH.' 501 Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Il- | understood that Slavery was to them linois, and (in fact) nearly every Free a blight and a curse that every State, would have been far heavier prominent and powerful religious orthan that actually returned; so it ganization throughout the South was will be but fair to estimate the pro- sternly pro-Slavery, its preachers Slavery voters of the entire Union as making more account in their prelecpreponderating in just about the pro- tions of Ham and Onesimus than of portion of Three Millions to Two. Isaiah and John the Baptist—and he In other words, three-fifths of the en- will be certain to render a judgment tire American People (the Blacks less hasty and more just. There being then of little more account, were probably not a hundred white politically, than so many cattle) sym-churches south of the Potomac and pathized with the Rebellion in so far as its animating purpose was the fortification, diffusion, and aggrandizement of Slavery. And this explains that exaggeration of the importance as well as of the beneficence of human chattelhood which is seen to pervade all the earlier harangues, manifestoes, and State papers, circulated or uttered in the interest of Disunion. He would underrate the sagacity of the conspirators, and impute to them a blind fanaticism which they never felt, who should fail to take into account the state of antecedent opinion whereon these were designed to operate. Let him but consider that, throughout thirteen of the fifteen Slave States, no journal of any note or influence had for many years been issued which was not an ardent champion and eulogist of Slavery-that no man could be chosen to Congress from any district in those thirteen States, and none from more than two districts of the entire fifteen, who was not a facile and eager instrument of the Slave Power, even though (as in West Virginia) their inhabitants well "Of the sermons with which the South was carpeted-thick as Autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Vallombrosa'-between November, 1860, and May, 1861, that entitled "Slavery a And Ohio which would have received an Divine Trust," by Rev. B. M. Palmer, of New- "In determining our duty in this emergency, |