slave to a condition of meniality for which there is no abolition. We have shown, from long array of unimpeachable evidence, that this same system is fast reducing the French and British West Indies from their former proud position of opulance and power, to degradation, misery and want, without regard to caste, condition or color. Have we not then, a right to infer from the analysis of history, and the stern development of physical facts, that any principle or policy which beggars ourselves and destroys the happiness of all alike-master as well as slave-white as well as black-is radically wrong, especially since the devotees of this Utopian philanthropy can point to no living fact within the world's history where the political agitation of the slavery qusstion, has been of the least practical good service? And have we not a right to suppose that the effort to bring all grades of human society to one common level, as common partakers of common rights and privileges-in short, to do by legislation what God Himself has never seen fit to do, is at least one step beyond our prerogatives?

M'KENSIE'S OPINION.

Nor is it our purpose to argue that slavery is right or politic. We have nothing to do with it as an original question. We must treat it as a fact fixed by causes long anterior to our day, and by analogy to consider the consequences of its sudden demolition, by means known to have failed in every instance."

to

"No matter," says McKensie, "how worthy the motive of philanthropists, historical facts stare us in the face, that it is misplaced philanthropy to endeavor elevate the African to an equality with the Caucassian race. Either the inferior becomes more abject and miserable, or both, like mixing tar with water, deterioate, and will finally go into irretrievable decline. An inferior and superir race cannot exist together on terms of equality."

Indeed, this was almost the identical language of President Lincoln to the negro delegation that called upon him in Washington.

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS.

Are we to read our fate by the light of past history that sheds its hideous glare around us? We are now in the midst of a most gigantic revolution, receiving its main source of nourishment, and basing its excuses for the oblation of blood that now crimsons the soil of half this continent, on the same portentious cloud of agitation, behind which the sun of Roman greatness sat to rise no more-the same species of agitation that for two centuries shook the British Empire from centre to circumferance, and has resulted in a confirmed failure of its objects in her West India possessions the same grade of agitation that not only lost to France the "Queen of the Antilles," but has, to all present appearances, blotted out St. Domingoian happiness-the same restless, meddling, fanatical agitation that forced Mexican staves from one species of servitude into an infinitely more degrading one-an agitation, that no truthful pen of history has shown,

or can show, has ever wrought any permanent, lasting good to either the enslaved or the enslavers-an agitation, marked in every stage of its animus or progress, from Romish agrarianism, and French Jacobism, down to American political Puritanism, by selfishness and ambition, having no parallels, and but few exceptions.

As before stated, we offer no defense of slavery. That is far from our purpose or design. As an original question, it has, in our estimation, absolutely nothing to recommend it, save, perhaps, some passages of Holy Writ, to which we by no means appeal-nor do we fall back on a common, yet ingenious argument, that any species of servitude is slavery-that the weak and ignorant ever were, and ever will be subservient to, and consequently the slaves, in an essential degree, of the wise, the wealthy and powerful. We ask no such aids as these, however well grounded in the logic of philosophy. We freely grant, without equivocation or mental reservation, that to our view, legalized slavery is an evil, and while from our stand point of education, moral and religious training, we revolt when asked to defend the system, as of right, it is our duty, nevertheless, to treat it in all its phases, as a fixed fact, as we would any other great evil which the highest wisdom and holiest purposes of the World have failed to overthrow. We must treat it as a defacto system, having its germ in causes beyond the control of the people of this era. The present generation is not responsible for the existence of slavery. Mr. LINCOLN in his first annual message insists that the North is as much responsible as the South for the exist→ ence and continuance of slavery.

None but the merest criminal quack would cut the throat of his patient to cure a tumor on his neck, and the world would decide it criminal mal practice to eviscerate one afflicted with a cancer in his stomach, or to amputate a limb to remeve insipient eresipelas.

Good and wise statesmen from the earliest period of our history saw this tumor, this cancer and this malady on the body politic. They grappled with the disease, and treated the patient according to the best skill and science of the age. They dared not apply the cauterizing lancet, lest its sudden severance from the system, and society to which it had been immemorially attached, should expire under the operation. Among all the illustrious statesmen and philosophers that have adorned the history of our common country, not one has ever been able to draw from the logic of past or present events, or from the theories of the future, a satisfactory solution to this vexed problem. Not one has been able to practically dispose of the question, with safety to the Caucasian and humanity to the African races on this continent.

To suddenly transport four millions of bondsmen from a long, immemorial servitude, under the besetting improvidence, want of care for themselves, ignorance, low vices and indolence, to a condition of freemen, with all the untutored responsibilities of providing against

want, surrounded by the snares of temptation and vice to which the negro character too freely yields, without those checks of family police regulations that have for centuries restrained an inferior race, would inevitably propogate miseries untold for both classes, that ages could not efface; and, the great question is, as it ever has been, Which is the greater evil, to suddenly force emancipation, or permit God, in His administration of human affairs to solve a problem that many nations have, for centuries, been in vain endeavoring to determine by edicts, codes and Proclamations, and if it be asked, "Why not try it, as retributive punishment on the 'cause of the war?" the answer has already been furnished by the tears and blood of nations that have been poisoned by quaffing from the same chalice. We have more to fear from punishing ourselves than others, in this matter.

If history has any significance, can we afford to repeat the experiment? That is a question now before the nation. The people must be responsible for their answer. Our duty ends when we have placed the panorama of veritable history before them.

Gov. DENNISON (Rep.) in his message to the Ohio Legislature, in 1861, says:

"An act of immediate general emancipation, throwing four millions of the colored caste loose on society, North and South, would leave them more enslaved than they are now. Without the intelligence, power, and means of a master of the superior race, to support them in the competition of that race, in the business of life, they would perish. The North rejecting them, as it has done in many states, and might do in others, the four millions let loose in the South, would encounter a war of castes-A WAR OF EXTERMINATION!"

slavery was even the pretext for the present rebellion, may be safely denied, for it cannot be supposed any people would rebel against their own chosen institutions, but that the agitation of the slavery question gave to the pretext for war, its present momentum and its insipient status no one can in truth deny. The argument, based on the assumption that 'slavery is the cause of the war"-that to put a stop to the effect we must remove the cause, is fallacious both in fact and theory. As we proceed, we shall endeavor to show it is not true in fact, and will endeavor here to exhibit the absurdity of the theory.

CAUSE AND EFFECT ILLUSTRATED.

It is asserted, and we believe no one has ever questioned the fact, that religion has been the cause of more wars and bloodshed than all

other causes combined since the advent of man on this planet. Shall we argue that therefore religion should be abolished, to prevent the clashing of religious antagonisms? Bread was the "cause" of the great bread riot in London, in the 16th century. Should bread be abolished to remove the "cause" of bread riots?

Banks have been the "cause" of numorous bank riots. Will bankers consent to the abolition of that "cause?" The conscription act was the "cause" of the great anti-conscription riot in New York, in 1863. Will the radicals be sufficiently consistent to admit, that to prevent such recurring evils in the future, the conscription act should be abolished?

These illustrations might be almost indefinitely multiplied, but we have given enough to

CHAPTER III.

HISTORY OF CAUSES OF WAR.

Slavery not the Cause of the War... Illustrations showing the Absurdity of the Claim that it is...Henry Ward Beecher declares the Constitution to be the Cause... Sen ator Douglas' Testimony... Alex. Stevens' Views... The

Rebel Iverson on the "Cause"...Gov. Rhett on ditto ...The Rebel Benjamin, with Republican aid, creates a "Cause"...The Constitution the "Cause"... Early Times ...The Three Parties in 1786...Alex. Hamilton's "Strong Government"...Early Opposition to the Constitution... Vote close in some of the State Conventions... The Four Rebellions... Shays' Rebellion... South Carolina Rebellion in 1832-The great Abolition Rebellion... The grea: Southern Rebellion of 1861... What the Cause of the War...

Abolition Petitions for Dissolution...A Public Debt a Public Blessing... The object to Destroy the Government ...Know-Nothingism as an Element to Wreck the Government, by placing Power in the hands of its Destroyers... Numerous Extracts in Proof...Treason of the Clergy in 1814...Treason of the Federals in 1814...Support of the Government "Reprobated" by Federal Reprobates, &c,

IS SLAVERY THE CAUSE OF THE WAR?
"Mad, let us grant him then, and now remains
That we find out the cause of this defect;
Or rather say the cause of this defect,
For this effect defective comes by cause.

[Shakespeare.

So far as this question can be determined, history and facts must sit as umpires. That

"cause," or if it be a cause, the removal of it will not necessarily cure the evil. A cask of powder placed beneath a dweling is perfectly harmless, until some "agitator" applies the torch, that developes its destructive powers, and so it is with the slavery question. So long as agitators permitted it to remain where our fathers placed it, all was prosperity and peace, but the moment fanatical agitators applied the spark, the magazine exploded, and the whole nation is now writhing in the agony developed by the incendiary's torch.

had nothing real to complain of. It will an- | swer our end quite as well for another purpose, and that is to show, just what we are considering, that there has long existed a party in this country bent on the dissolution of the Union. The abolitionists furnished them with the slavery agitation, which answered their purpose as a pretext, and that was all they wanted.

DOUGLAS ON THE "CAUSE."

Said Senator DOUGLAS in the last speech he ever made:

"I ask you to reflect, and then point out any act that has been done, any duty that has been omitted to be done of

which any of these disunionists can justly complain. Yet we are told simply because one party has succeeded in a Presidential election, therefore they choose to consider that their liberties are not safe, and therefore they break up

the Government."

ALEXANDER STEPHENS SPURNS THE SLAVERY

"CAUSE."

ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS, the Vice President over the Southern Confederacy, said, when the question of Secession was pending before the people of Georgia:

"What right has the North assailed? What justice has been demanded? and what claim founded in justice and right has been withheld? Can either of you name to-day one single act of wrong, deliberately and purposely done by the Government at Washington, of which the South can complain. I challenge the answer."

THE REBEL IVERSON ON THE "CAUSE." During the debates in the last Congress before the several states, except South Carolina, had seceded, Mr. IVERSON, a distinguished Senator from Georgia, in the Senate Chamber, said:

"Sir, before the 4th of March, before you inaugurate your President, there will be certainly five states, if not eight of them, that will be out of the Union and have formed a constitution and form of Government for themselves. You talk about repealing the personal liberty bills as a concession to the South! Repeal them all to-morrow, sir, and it would not stop this recolution. Nor do we suppose there will be any overt acts on the part of Mr. Lincoln. For one, I do not dread these overt acts. I do not propose to wait for them. ** Now, sir, we intend to go out of this Union. I speak what I believe upon this floor, that before the 4th of March, five of the Southern states, at least, will have declared their independence; and I am satisfied that three others of the cotton states that are now moving in this matter are not doing it without due conconsideration. We have looked over the field.

THE ELECTION OF LINCOLN NO "CAUSE " Gov. RHETT, in the South Carolina secession convention, in December, 1860-just after the Presidential election-said:

"The election of Lincoln was not the cause of secession. Disunion has been a cherished project for the last thirty years."

Senator TOOMBS, in his Georgia speech, brought up the old original grievance about Northern commercial advantages.

THE REBEL BENJAMIN TRIED TO CREATE A

"CAUSE."

Early in 1860 Senator BENJAMIN made a speech denouncing DOUGLAS, and eulogizing

LINCOLN. This was circulated all over the North under the franks of Republican members of Congress, and when BENJAMIN had succeeded in electing LINCOLN he seized the event as a warrantable pretext to dissolve the Union.He knew that with DOGLAS as Presdient he could not use the slavery question as a pretext, hence the effort to create a causus beli, and then take advantage of it.

THE CAUSE" DATES FROM THE BEGINNING.

From the beginning there has been a pow. erful party opposed to our form of government. If the reader will consult Elliott's Debates, and the "Madison Papers,” and make himself familiar with the tone of opinion that prevailed in the National and State Conventions that formed and adopted our present Constitution, he will perceive that a powerful minority existed in those days against the principles declared by our Constitution. Mr. MASON was in favor of "a President for life, his successor being chosen at the same time-a Senate for life, &c. Various were the objections to the Constitution, but most of them arose from local prejudices and interests. Some members of the South Carolina Convention objected to a Union under the Constitution, because it gave too much commercial advantage to the Northern States, while members of the New England Conventions were equally opposed because of certain Southern advantages, among which was the Fugitive clause, and the three-fifths representation, &c., and in all the debates of those times the student of history will find a marked coincidence between the reasons advanced against adopting the Constitution, and those of latter-day politicians against its enforcement. It was predicted at the time, by those in favor of a "strong government," that it would be, just what Beecher says it is, the "father of troubles."

THE THREE PARTIES THAT FORMED THE CONSTITUTION.

Mr. CAREY, in his Olive Branch, a work of some 450 pages, published in 1815, says there were three classes in the National Convention that formed our Constitution-the purely Democratic, who had a constant dread of Federal encroachments, and were for gaguing the power of the General Government to the lowest scale; a Democratic Republican party, that desired to invest the Federal Government with just enough power to make it efficient, and no more; and the Monarchists, "a small but active division," who utterly repudiated a Republican form of government. This faction ultimately attached themselves to the Federal party,

HAMILTON'S " STRONG GOVERNMENT."

ALEXANDER HAMILTON, a leading Federalist of that day, under date of New York, September 16, 1803, in a letter to TIMOTHY PICKERING, Esq., defined his idea of government, from which we select the following:

"The highest toned propositions which I made in the

Convention were for a President, Senate and Judges during good behaviour, though I would have enlarged the legis lative power of the General Government,' which Mr. CAREY pronounces equivalent to "a President for life.Olive Branch, p. 88.

EARLY OPPOSITION TO THE CONSTITUTION.

Unfortunately. we have not the full proceedings of all the conventions that adopted the Constitution, yet we have sufficient to show, by speech and vote, that it encountered a gigantic opposition, and, as Mr. MADISON often remarked, in his voluminous correspondence on the subject, its fate was shrouded in doubt until the last moment.

Rhode Island was ever attached to the mon

archial form of government, and refused to accredit delegates to the national convention. North Carolina held back for a long while, and in every State a most determined opposition was manifest, but at last the Democratic spirit prevailed, and for a time the factious "Charterists" yielded assent. Then, as now, the opponents of the constitution opposed it for diverse reasons, according to location, but they acted together as one man, for the same purpose, each granting to the other the right to use pretexts the most popular in the several sections to which they belonged. The opponents in New England sought the pretext of slavery, and other localized popular ideas, while those equally opposed in the South, used the commercial pretext for their opposition, and this parallel of mutual opposition for different and local reasons, has been kept up to this hour.

Maryland resolved not to take a vote, and voted to suppress the records of ayes and noes, and then immediately adjourned. RANDOLPH and MASON, of Virginia, and GERRY, of Massachusetts, refused to sign the constitution, as members of the National Convention; the former, however, finally favored it, and was charged by PATRICK HENRY with what was akin to bribery.

This opposition to our government has never ceased from that day to this, and to weld all the links of our historical chain, we will consider

THE FOUR REBELLIONS.

These, we can but briefly notice, as it is essential to a proper appreciation of the details that are in various ways their cotemporaries and causes, as we shall show in the progress of

this work.

Shays' Rebellion.

1st. The SHAY's Rebellion, which broke forth with armed resistance to the Government, in

| Massachusetts, in 1786-7, at the very time our fathers were deliberating on bringing forth (as Mr. LINCOLN said at Gettysburg) the new Government. The pretext for this rebellion was alledged to be the "oppressions of Government." (All rebellions have their pretexts.)

The Rebellion of 1832.

2d. The South Carolina Rebellion of 1832, when the "oppressive tariff laws" (called by South Carolina, before the constitution, Northern commercial advantages) were made to figure as the pretext. This Rebellion, though formidable, and enlisting the bitte ost passions of that portion of the South, was principally confined to the hot-spurs of South Carolina, whose ancestors had opposed the constitution, and hated our form of government, and who longed for an opportunity to put in operation their cherished system of Aristocracy, similar to that of England, and who held, with the same-class hailing from New England, that "a national debt was a national blessing." But, failing to use this pretext with sufficient success to arouse armed resistance, the excitement was finally quelled, partly by Old Hickory's firmness, and partly by Mr. CLAY's compromise tariff of 1833, and partly from the want of a disloyal peasantry to back up the malcontents.

The Great Abolition Rebellion.

3d. The great Northern rebellion, which particularly manifested itself in public laws, (personal liberty bills) inflamatory declamations and resolves by leading men, which appealed to the people on the pretexts of slavery aggression," to resist the laws of Congress and the mandates of the Supreme Court of the U. S. [See Charles Sumner's speech at Worcester. Aug. 7, 1854, and Wisconsin conspiracy.] This rebellion was formidable and threatening to the worst degree. The wealth of the North was poured out, free as water, to set in motion a train of circumstances that should "fire the Northern heart" to resistance, vi et armis, as was the case in many instances, particularbut encouraged by their partizans in office and ly in Wisconsin, where armed mobs, unrebuked out of office, forcibly, and for a long time successfully resisted the laws of Congress and the decisions of the Court of last resort. [The proofs of these outrages will appear under the head of "Revolutionary spirit of Republicanism.] This rebellion partially developed itself between the periods of 1854 and 1860, in which the Sharp's Rifle raid in Kansas, the HELPER

"crisis" and the JOHN BROWN raid formed no inconsiderable parts of the general conspiracy. All these and their kindred plots had their germ in revolutionary guilt, occasionally "cropping out" in the role of monster petitions to Congress from the New England states, praying for a dissolution of the government. The pretext for this, not altogether bloodless revolution, was the slavery question, but the gist of the indictment goes back of the Constitution.

The Great Rebellion of 1861.

4th. The great Southern rebellion of 1861,