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\ 
 
 "TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN." 
 
 THE CONSPIRACY 
 
 OF LEADING MEN OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 
 
 TO DESTROY 
 
 THE AMERICAN UNION 
 
 BY THEIR WORDS AND ACTS 
 
 ANTECEDENT AND SUBSEQUENT TO THE REBELLION. 
 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON MILES, 
 
 OF PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 PUBLISHED BY J. WALTER & CO., 
 
 19 CITY HALL SQUARE. 
 
 1864. 
 
 T 
 

 NOT ^ BY TH ■ IM BLISHERS. 
 
 Events of the past few years have demonstrated the existence of an organized 
 effort to make important changes in the Government of the United States ; not in 
 the legitimate manner provided by the Constitution, but insidiously, stealthily at 
 first, growing bolder by degrees, and at length when circumstances seemed to 
 warrant immunity from personal danger, unblushingly avowed, by the less cautious 
 aiders and abettors of the treasonable .work. 
 
 In the accompanying pages, the author, in a clear, logical, and eloquent manner, 
 has grouped numerous startling proofs, and from these argued the case with un- 
 usual abihty and fairness, and shown that the charge of "conspiracy" is justly 
 applied. But while clear proof is given of a cherished purpose, long entertained, 
 to subvert the Constitution by perverting and destroying its plainest provisions, 
 it does not appear that the design has ever been openly announced with a view of 
 bringing it distinctly and boldly to the notice of the public. On the contrary, 
 when charged with aiming at the subversion of the Government, the answer has 
 been that their purpose was not to destroy, but to save it. 
 
 Meantime, a large portion of the people, not understanding the questions at issue, 
 have been unable to discriminate between the real friends of liberty and law, and 
 the secret enemies of both. The crime planned and attempted, has been greater 
 in magnitude and in its contemplated result, than they were prepared to believe 
 possible. Hence, when the charge has been made and repeated, many have re- 
 garded it as one of those extravagant accusations which frequently arise from 
 partisan asperity. But the people are becoming hourly more enlightened upon 
 those subjects which enable them to appreciate the contemplated wrong, and they 
 have resolved to know the whole truth of the matter. A severe inquisition will 
 probe this question to the lieart. The real conspirators will be known, and will 
 receive the merited rewards of their deeds. 
 
 Most respectfully, but earnestly, we urge upon every champion of the Constitu- 
 tion, every friend of civil liberty, to lend his indivdiual influence zealously in the 
 circulation of this most valuable document. Nothing to be compared with it for 
 immediate and imjwrtant effect has yet appeared. One hundred thousand 
 copies, at least, should be in the hands of the people before the Sth of Novem- 
 ber. Contributions to this object may bo sent to the publishers, and all funds 
 furnished for this purpose, will be immediately used in the gratuitous distribution 
 of the pamphlet J. W. & CO. 
 
 New Yobk, October, 10, 1864. 
 
"TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN." 
 
 At no other period' since the morninj? of liberty (hiwned upon this 
 favored land, has it been so manifestly the duty of the people to discard par- 
 tisan bias, and all those potent influences which distract and mislead the 
 judgment ; in order that calmness, soberness, solemnity, and earnestness, 
 may characterize reflection, discussion, and action ; for by theSe influ- 
 ences alone can our country be saved from certain, speedy, and irretriev- 
 able ruin. In the halcyon days of the Republic, those good old days of 
 " Virtue, Liberty, and Independence," the political questions which 
 engaged the attention of the people were multifarious. Questions of 
 revenue, of finance, the improvement of harbors and rivers ; the distribu- 
 tion of the proceeds of public lands among the States, and the occupa- 
 tion of those lands by the sturdy pioneer. 
 
 My fellow-countrymen, these questions, and many others of like import, 
 were once regarded as possessing vital inrferest for the people of our 
 common country. Alas ! They no longer possess an interest for you. 
 
 As when a great calamity casts its gloomy shadow over our individual 
 household, all minor evils are forgotten in the anxiety occasioned by the 
 one overwhelming affliction, so this unspeakable calamity which has 
 visited our national household has driven from our minds all thought of 
 those legitimate governmental questions, whose very discussion was the 
 best indication of peace, contentment, happiness, and prosperity, such as 
 no other people under the broad canopy of heaven were ever permitted to 
 enjoy. No, my countrymen — no ! one question alone is worthy of your 
 deliberation now. It is a question that freemen are asking one of an- 
 other with kindling eye and throbbing heart, What CAN BE DONE TO 
 RESCUE FROM THE GRASP OF DESPOTIC POWER THE PRICELESS JEWEL 
 OF CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY ? This is the vital question, that towers in 
 colossal proportions above all others. You, citizens of America, upon 
 the solemn responsibility which you owe, not alone to yourselves, but to 
 latest posterity, must answer on the eighth of November next. Let me 
 adjure you to remember that upon the response which you shall make, is 
 involved all that can make life desirable to an American citizen. 
 
 Let us, then, Freemen of America, resolve by all the inspiring memories 
 of the past, by all the imperilled interests of the present, by all our anxious 
 hopes in the future, that the Constitution, the laws, and the Union of 
 these States shall be maintained and defended against treason, in every 
 form, whether it be arrayed under the flaunting banner of Southern 
 secession, or under the atrocious and contemptible, because insidi- 
 ous and cowardly black flag of Northern Abolitionism. 
 
4 " TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN." 
 
 Is it not amazing that so many of the honest yeomanry of the country 
 can be so blinded by party prejudice, so trammelled by party discipline as 
 still to array themselves under a banner that for thirty years has had em- 
 blazoned upon its folds, in characters so plain that none need misunder- 
 stand, those very doctrines of disunion and discord, which ai*e now so 
 falsely charged upon the Democracy of the country ? Yet, so it is, — a 
 lamentable fact. Although the rank and file of all political organizations 
 are honest and well meaning, they are liable to be cajoled and misled by 
 wily, selfish, and unscrupulous demagogues, made willing victims of their 
 own destruction. 
 
 While history records some examples of voluntary surrender of liberty 
 by the people, under the baleful teachings of artful, ambitious men, its 
 pages will be searched in vain for a parallel to that self-stultification, 
 moral blindness, prejudice, fanaticism, or by whatsoever name it may be 
 called, through whose maddening influence a large portion of the free 
 citizens of this enlightened and most favored land, are, at this very mo- 
 ment, deliberately riveting the manacles of despotism upon their own free 
 limbs. 
 
 I most respectfully entreat every fair-minded and reasonable Eepub- 
 lican to suspend for a brief season those partisan prejudices which blind- 
 fold him to the light of reason, and render him deaf to the voice of fair 
 discussion. I care not to appeal to the passions of men. I prefer to ad- 
 dress myself to their honest, sober reflections. Unless, indeed, it may 
 be said, 
 
 "O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts. 
 And men have lost their reason I" 
 
 Words of wisdom seem to be lost amid the shrieking whirlwind of pas- 
 sion, the tread of marshalled hosts, the clash of glittering steel, the dis- 
 cordant bellowing of ponderous artillery, and the crackling embers of 
 conflagrated cities ; and when at length " some dreary pause between," 
 and sympathizing Night has cast her dusky mantle over the horror of 
 these scenes, hark ! another sound, more terrible than the din of battle, 
 breaks upon the stillness of the midnight hour. Alas ! for that wail of 
 anguish whose woful cadence, rising from fields of carnage, is floated to 
 every cottage and mountain-home throughout the broad area of this once 
 bright and peerless, now bleeding and disti-acted land. 
 
 Let us then, in the first place, endeavor to brush away the cobwebs 
 which the spider, Abolition, has woven about the eyelids of so many con- 
 servative and well-meaning men, in order that they may be enlightened 
 in regard to some, at least, of the numerous heresies of the Republican 
 creed : prominent among which, and perhaps the most mischievous, is 
 that of confounding the Administration of the Government with the Gov- 
 ernment itst'lf. This is a cardinal error, and betrays a misapprehension 
 of the true theory of our governmental structure. A little reflection, un- 
 biased by party zeal, would reveal the nakedness of this fallacy. 
 
 Republicans clamor for an unconditional support of the Government, 
 meaning the Administration. Democrats contend for an unconditional 
 support of the Government, meaning the Constitution and the laws. 
 
"to all whom it may concern. 5 
 
 Republicans arguo that the Adiiunistratioii, for tlui time Ix'iiif^, in the 
 Goveniincnt. Di'iiiocrats tleuy the correctness of this proposition. 
 
 I hohl as an axiom, that the Constitution of tiie United States, einlx. dy- 
 ing in its provisions tlie will of the soveurion I'koI'LK is, ^^er tte. the 
 Oovernment of tlie United States. That Constitution i)r(>vides for its own 
 administration in the election by the people of agents, with power to 
 those agents to appoint subordinates. The official titles of said principal 
 agents, their terms of office, their duties and their salaries, being fixed 
 and designated hy the people in their Constitution. And whenever, and 
 by whomsoever, addition to or subtraction from that fundamental law is 
 attempted, in ever so minute a degree — save in the* manner written and 
 provided therein ; or whenever or by whomsoever another law is attempt- 
 ed to be substituted for this supreme law, the person or persons so oft'end- 
 ing are guilty of, at least, moral treason to the Govennnent of the United 
 States. 
 
 How natural that the author of the "Higher Law" doctrine, should 
 also be the author of the following words, addressed to Lord Lyons in 
 November, 1861 : 
 
 " My Lord, I can touch a bell on my right hand, and order the arrest 
 of a citizen of Ohio; I can touch the bell again, and order the irnprison- 
 ment of a citizen of New York; and no power on earth, except that of 
 the President, can release them. Can the Queen of England do so 
 much .'" 
 
 I wonder if it did not occur to Lord Lyons, when these precious words 
 were uttered, that it might have been better for those '^citizens of Ohio 
 and New York," had their forefathers been content to remain subjects of 
 King George the Third. The Queen of England certainly cannot "do 
 so much." There are but few Despots in the world who would dare " do 
 so much." Perhaps the Empires of Japan and China, the dominions of 
 the Sultan of Turkey, the King of Dahomey, and the United Stales of 
 America ! are the only Governments within whose realms there can be 
 done " so much." What higher claim has any De.spot ever advanced 
 than the unconditional support of his subjects ? The difference between 
 a Despotism and a Kepublic is in this : that while a Despot claims uncon- 
 ditional obedience from the peojile to his will ; in a Uepublic like ours, 
 the sovereign people demand unconditional obedience from tlu^ir agent to 
 their (the people's) will, as expressed in their written Constitution. 
 
 To admit that unconditional allegiance is due from the people to the 
 Administration, of their own creation, is to admit that the people resign 
 their sovereignty to the Administration ; and inasmuch as there has been 
 no interregnum between the expiration of one Administration and the 
 commencement of another, it follows, as a logical deduction (according 
 to the theory of the Republicans) that ever since the election of General 
 Washington, we have been merely the subjects of a long line of sove- 
 reign Administrations! Our familiar vaunt, "tlie sovereign people," has 
 been a shallow pretence — a delusion. 
 
 If the Republican theory be correct, then I admit I have no right, save 
 by permission of my sovereign, to write this address, or, persisting in so 
 
6 ''TO ALL ^Y^OM IT MAY CONCERN." 
 
 doing, I shall have no right to complain if the iron gripe which Despots 
 usually fasten on the throats of those who defy their authority, should 
 clutch at mine. 
 
 This is certainly an important consideration, and worthy of the most seri- 
 ous reflection of every citizen, whether Republican or Democrat, who here- 
 tofore lias indulged the belief that he was one of the SOVEREIGN people. 
 Meanwhile, let us turn over a few pages of familiar history. Seventy- 
 seven years ago, on the 17th of September, that matchless work of wis- 
 dom, the Federal Constitution, perfect in all its proportions, came forth 
 from the hands of its creatoi'S. Go with me, in memory, to the city of 
 Philadelphia, on the 14th of May, 1787. On that day, there assembled 
 in the now venerable Hall of Independence, a Convention, composed of 
 men whose names are written in characters of flame on the scroll of im- 
 mortality ; whose glorious deeds deserve to be recorded on the tablet of 
 every freeman's heart. From the 14th of May to the 17th of September, 
 those sages were engaged in earnest, prayerful deliberation ; and what 
 was the burden of their anxiety during all those months ? 
 
 You, my countrymen, each individual of you — your happiness and 
 mine — your liberties and mine ! The great problem to be solved was the 
 construction of a coufederative system of Governmeiit, while yet pre- 
 serving, in perfect distinctness aiid vigor, the sovereignty of each indi- 
 vidual State ; in order thereby .to perpetuate to their latest posterity those 
 inestimable political blessings, which, after seven long years of toil, of 
 blood, of poverty, destitution, and horror, they had wrung from the tyrant 
 of Britain. This was the grand problem, which, during that period, from 
 May until September, claimed the God-like intellect, wisdom, and devo- 
 tion of men clothed in the vesture of nature's nobility — heroes, patri- 
 ots, sires — our fathers, — a race of men whom God will vouchsafe to the 
 world but once. 
 
 Read the immortal record — James Madison and John Blair of Virginia, 
 the two Piuckueys of South Carolina, Langdon of New Hampshire, Sher- 
 man of Connecticut, Alexander Hamilton of New York, Livingston of 
 New Jersey, Franklin, Mililin, IngersoU, the two Morris's, and Clymer 
 of Pennsylvauia, Dickenson of Delaware, Carroll of ^Maryland, Williamson 
 of North Carolina, Baldwin of Georgia, — these are some of the names. 
 And then we read the name of one, presiding over that august Conven- 
 tion, wiio, e\(H auau^i i.; i uok o laJ, -laads mujesticalty proannent. 
 The peerless example for the study of mankind, created, as it were, to 
 animate our race in every age and in every clime, to ennobling aspirations, 
 and virtuous deeds — a name encircled with the etfulgwut light of its own 
 undying glory — a name enshrined in the inmost chambers of every heart, 
 where virtue and the love of liberty delight to dwell — the name of one, 
 whom monsters, like Wendell Phillips, Garrison, Chiever, and Beecher 
 desecrate, on the same principle which causes vice and uncli'anness to 
 abhor tlit- presence of virtue and purity — the name of one, whose sacred 
 ashes reposing in the bosom of his own beh)Ved Virginia, beh)iig equally 
 to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and every other State, and will 
 not be surrendered by a patriotic and sturdy yeomanry. 
 
 \ 
 
"to all wjiom it may CONCKKN." 7 
 
 Yes, my fi-llow-countryincn, at tli<i portals <if tlic tonili of Wasliini^ton 
 sits the genius of Liberty, State Sovereignty, and Union; and while thn 
 echo of fratricidal artillery disturbs the silence of that halhtwed spot, let 
 us invoke the lofty spirit of the Father of his country, to exorcise the 
 demon of discord from the land he loved so well ; that hate, and passion, 
 and wild fury, and fanaticism may flee the American heart, while love, and 
 reason, and generous counsel, may animate to the great work of rescuing 
 from everlasting ruin, the priceless legacy which he bequeathed to us. 
 
 In transmitting to Congress a copy of the Constitution, and the resolu- 
 tions of the Convention, recommending its submission to the States for 
 ratification, George Washington, who performed that duty, thus wrote : 
 
 "The Constitution which xve now present, is the result of a spirit of 
 amity, and of that mutual deference and concession, which, the pecu- 
 liarity of our political situation rendered indispensable. That it is liable 
 to as few exceptions as could reasonably be expected, we hope and believe ; 
 that it may promote the lasting welfare of that country so dear to us all, 
 and secure her freedom and happiness is our most ardent wish," 
 
 In his immortal Farewell Address, he writes : V Hence, likewise, they 
 will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establinhments, 
 which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and 
 which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.^' 
 
 Again he writes in the same Address : " The bases of our political sys- 
 tems, is the right of the people to make and alter their constitutions of 
 government; but the Constitution, which at any time exists, till changed, 
 by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly olfliga- 
 tory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to 
 establish government, presupposes the duty of every individual to obey 
 the established government^ 
 
 Mark the language that Washington uses. It has been said that 
 '■''words are things;" General Washington does not use the singular 
 noun base of our political system, but he employs the plural nouns bases, 
 systems, and constitutions of Government. I repeat the sentence : " The 
 bases of our political systems, is the right of the people to make and alter 
 their constitutions of government," &u. 
 
 Now, if Washington had written ten folio volumes, upon whose every 
 page he had declared that the Federal government was the creature of the 
 so ereign Stntes. and not that the States are creatures of the Federal 
 government (which is the theory of the present Ilepublican party), he 
 could not have more clearly and emphatically announced his opinion. 
 
 Let it be observed, also, that he uses the words " constitution" and 
 "government" synonymously, proving that he regarded the Constitution 
 as the Government. Again he writes : 
 
 "The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by 
 the spirit of revenge, natural to pai'ty dissension, which, in ditlVrent ages 
 and countries, has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a 
 frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and per- 
 manent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result, gradually 
 incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power 
 of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, 
 
b "TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN. 
 
 more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to 
 the purposes of his own elevation on the iiuiNS OF public liberty. " 
 
 *' It is important, likewise, that the hahits of thinking, in a free country, 
 should inspire caution in those intrustid with its administration, to con- 
 fine themstdves within tlieir respective constiiutioual spheres; avoiding, 
 in the exercise of the powers of one department, to encroach upon another. 
 The s[iirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the de- 
 partments in one. and thus to create, — whateverthe form of government, — 
 a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness 
 to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy 
 us of the truth of this position." "If in the opinion of the people, the 
 distribution or modification of the powers be in any particular wrong, let 
 it be corrected by an amendment, in the way which the Constitution desig- 
 nates. But let there be no change by usurpation, for though 
 this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary 
 weapon, by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must 
 always greatly overbalance, in permanent evil, any partial or transient 
 benefit which the use can, at any time, yield." 
 
 In these extracts, you have Washington's opinion of the Constitution. 
 Says James Madison, in his first inaugural address, delivered in 1809 : 
 
 " Prefer in all cases, amicable discussion, and reasonable accommoda- 
 tions of differences, to a decision of them by an appeal to arms ; to hold 
 the Union of the States as the basis of their peace and happiness ; to sup- 
 port the Constitution, which is the cement of the Union, as well in its 
 limitations as in its authorities ; to respect the rights and authorities 
 reserved to the States, and to the people, as equally incorporated with, and 
 essential to the success of the general system ;" " to preserve in their full 
 energy, the other salutary provisions, in behalf of private and personal 
 rights, and of the freedom of the press." "Always remembering that an 
 armed and trained MILITIA is the firmest bulwark of republics — that with- 
 out standing ti/'mies, their liberty can never be in danger, NOR with large 
 ones safe!" 
 
 Said Thomas Jefi"erson, in his first inaugural, in 1801 : 
 
 "All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will 
 of the nmjority is, in all cases, to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must 
 be reasonable ; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal 
 laws 7nmt protect, and to violate, would, be oppression." " And let us 
 reflect, that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance un- 
 der wliich mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little, 
 • if we countenance a political intolm-ance as despotic, as wicked, and 
 capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions." 
 
 Again, Mr. Jefferson writes : 
 
 " The support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most 
 competent administrations for our domestic concerns, and the surest bul- 
 jwarks against anti-republican tendencies;'" "A JEALOUS care of the 
 RIGHT of electidn bv THE PEOPLE. The supremacy of the civil over 
 thu military authority, (economy in the public expense, that labor may 
 be lightly burdened. Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and 
 freedom of person, under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trials 
 by juri<-s impartially selected. These principles form the bright constel- 
 lation which has gone Ijefore us, and guided our steps through an age of 
 revoluli.Mi and reformation. The wisdom of our sages, and blood of our 
 heine-, have been devoted U> their attainment; they should be the creed 
 of our [x.litical faith, the text of civic instruction', the touchstone, by 
 
"to all whom it may CONX'KKN. 9 
 
 which to try the services of those we trust; niid shoulil we wnmlcr fn.ni 
 them in moments of error or ularin. let us liasteii to retrace our steps, uud 
 to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety." 
 
 Says Chief-Justice Story, a name universally esteemed, referring^ to 
 the high responsibilities of the people, to prt-servc their Constituiiou from 
 usurping power : 
 
 " It must perish, if there be not that vital spirit in the people, which 
 alone can nourish, sustain, and direct all its movements. It is in vain 
 that Statesmen shall form plans of government, in whicli tlie hcautv and 
 harmony of a republic shall be emb<idied in visibU- order, shall 1)^ built up 
 on solid substructions, and adorned by every useful urnauu-nt, if the inliab- 
 tauts suffer the silent power of time to dilapidate its walls, or crumble its 
 massy supporters into dust; if the assaults from without are never re- 
 sisted, and the rottenness and mining from within are never guarded 
 against, who can preserve the riglits and lil)erties of the people, when 
 they shall be abandoned by themselves? Who shall keep watch in the 
 Temple, when the watchmen sleep at their posts? Who shall call on the 
 people to redeem their possessions, and revive the republic, when their 
 hands have deliberately and corruptly surrendered them to the oppressor, 
 and have built the prisons, or dug the graves of their own friends ? Thia 
 dark picture, it is to be hoped, will never be applicable to the Kepublic 
 of America ; and yet it affords a warning, which, like all the lessons of 
 past experience, we are not permitted to disregard ; America, free, happy, 
 and enlightened as she is, must rest the preservation of her rights and 
 liberties upon the virtue, independence, justice, and sagacity of the 
 people. If either fail, the Republic is gone. Its shadow may remain 
 with all the pomp, and circumstance, and trickery of government, but 
 its vital power will have departed. In America, the dem^igogue may rise 
 as well as elsewhere. He is the natural, though spurious growth of 
 Republics; and, like the courtier, he may, by his blandishments, delude 
 the ears and blind the eyes of the people, to their own destruction. If 
 ever th(?* day shall arrive, in which the best talents and the best virtues 
 shall be driven from office by intrigue or corruption, by the ostracism of the 
 press, or the still more unrelenting persecution of party legislation, the 
 GOVERNMENT will cease to be national. It will be wise by accident, and 
 bad by sytem." 
 
 Montesquieu declares that \ 
 
 '' The political liberty of the citizen is a tranquillity of mind, arising from 
 the opinion each person has of his safety. The enjoyment of liberty, and 
 even its support and preservation, consists in every man being allowed to 
 speak his thoughts and lay open his sentiments." 
 
 In a letter from that great statesman, Silas Wright, dated April 9, 
 1847, he writes : 
 
 *'No one familiar with the affairs of our Government can have failed to 
 notice how largje a proportion of our statesmen appear never to have read 
 the Constitution of the United States, with a careful reference to it>^ pre- 
 cise language and exact procisions, but rather, as occasion presents, seem 
 to exercise their ingenuity, unfortunately too often powerful and power- 
 fully exerted to slretcn both to the line of what they at the moment con- 
 sider EXPEDIENT." 
 
 Said that enlightened statesman and scholar, John McPherson Berrien, 
 of Georgia : 
 
10 " TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN." 
 
 " A kiiowledi^e of tho Constitution, wliichis for the most part plain and 
 simple in its provisions, would often enable the citizen to spurn indig- 
 nantly the eftorts of demagogues to mislead him, and awaken hiui to a 
 deeper sense of gratitude for the privileges which he is permitted to 
 enjoy." 
 
 On the 13th of February, 1847, George M. Dallas wrote these words : 
 
 " It [the Constitution] should form the rudimental basis of American 
 thought, by being made a perpetually recurring object of memory." 
 
 I will conclude these quotations with one from the great expounder 
 himself, though they might be continued almost indefinitely : on the 11th 
 of December, 1850, Daniel \Vebster,_theu near the close of his useful life, 
 thus wrote ; 
 
 " The Constitution of the United States is a written instrument, a 
 recoriied fundamental law ; it is the bond and the only bond of the Union 
 of these States ; it is all that gives us a national character. Almost every 
 man in the country is capable of reading it, and that which so deeply 
 concerns all, should be made easily accessible to all." 
 
 These are some of the recorded opinions of sages, statesmen, and phi- 
 losophers, in relation to the Constitution of the United States — most of 
 them Democrats. Now, let us look at the published opinions of the lead- 
 ers of the abolitionized Republican party. Contrast is at least an artistic 
 arrangement. 
 
 Bear in mind, if ^ou please, that the Constitution must be accepted or 
 rejected as a whole. It was so adopted, and not one line or syllable can 
 be rejected without endangering the whole system of government, of 
 which it is the life. 
 
 The fourth article just as clearly recognizes the I'ight to hold pi'operty 
 in slaves as the fifth article recognizes the right to alter and amend the 
 instrument itself. One article is just as obligatory upon the people as 
 another, and any person or persons who would endeavor to escape that 
 obligation by setting up ** a higher law," a law of sentiment to be obeyed 
 in preference to the Constitution, whenever its provisions conflict with 
 their tender consciences, pi-ove themselves traitors to the Government of 
 the United States. And this is the kind of treason that has produced 
 this civil war, and deluged the land in fratricidal blood. 
 
 I now deliberately charge the leaders of the so-called Republican, but 
 really Ab<jlition party, with a premeditated conspiracy to destroy the 
 Constitution of the United States, and per consequence, the American 
 Union. Mark, I say, leaders of this party, for, as I have already 
 remarked, the rank and file of one party are just as honest as those of 
 the other, but deceived and betrayed. * 
 
 Now, to the proof of this serious charge. In cases of capital crime cir- 
 ouuihtantial evidence, where tho chain is unbroken, has been regarded by 
 writers on criminal law as the safest kind of proof upon which to find a 
 riglittious verdict. We have both circumstantial and positive evidence 
 upon which to rest our case. 
 
 Tlie nomination of Abraham Lincoln, at Chicago, was only one scene 
 
"to all whom it may oonckkx." 11 
 
 in one act of this wicked iuul blondy dnima. Mniiv scciics ii;ivc Ihtii 
 enacted since, hut like the phiy within tlie i>hiy, in the third net of Ham- 
 let, there will, I apprehend, arise such an infernal coinniDtion anionf^ tlie 
 audience that the conspirators will be driven in diseonifiture from the 
 stage, appalled at the picture of their own diabolical murder. Said one 
 of the high priests of their party, one who has received distinguished 
 courtesies at the hands of the President while in Washington, and who 
 was invited by a majority of the Senate to a seat on the floor of the Sen- 
 ate Chamber; an honor rarely accorded, and only to those who have 
 distinguished themselves in the service of their country, and to foreign 
 Ambassadors — said Wendell Phillips : 
 
 " The Constitution of our fathers was a mistake. Tear it to piecrs, and 
 make a better- one. Don't say the machine is out of order ; it is in order; 
 it does what its framers intended — pi-otect slavery. Our claim is Dis- 
 union, breaking up of (he States! I have shown you that our work can- 
 not be done under our institutions." 
 
 '■'■This Union is a lie ! The American Union is an imposture, a covenant 
 with death, and an agreement with hell. * * * lam for its overthrow."^ 
 
 Said Lloyd Garrison : 
 
 " Up with the flag of Disunion, that we may have a free and glorious 
 Republic of our own ; and when the hour shall come, the hour will have 
 arrived that shall witness the overthrow of slavery." 
 
 Here is what Phillips said of the Republican party, when it was organ- 
 ized as a sectional party, and it will be noticed how well and how truly 
 he pictured it : 
 
 " No man has a right to be surprised at this state of things. It is just 
 what we [Abolitionists and Disuuionists] have attempted to bring about. 
 It is the first sectional party ever organized in this country. It does not 
 know its own face, and calls itself national — it is sectional. The Repub- 
 lican party is a party of the North, pledged against the South." 
 
 Gai-rison, in his Liberator, said still more explicitly : 
 
 " The Republican party is moulding public sentiment in the right di- 
 rection for the specific work the Aboliticmists are striving to accomplish, 
 viz. : 7V;e dissolution of the Union, and the abolition of Slaver!/ throughout 
 the land." 
 
 All the while that the Abolitionists were talking thus boldly, the Repub- 
 lican leaders pretended to the people that Garrison nnd Piiiilips did not 
 represent their sentiments ; but let it be remembered tliat tiny expressed 
 most substantially the same sentiments, yet in more vague ami uncertain 
 language. Said Abraham Lincoln in his famous controversy with Judge 
 Douglas : 
 
 " / believe this Government cannot endure permanently half slave and 
 half free." 
 
 That is, that it cannot endure as Washington formed it, and as it ex- 
 isted for seventy years. Mr. Garrison was of exactly the same opinion ; 
 and, though Mr. Lincoln does not say all that Mr. Garrison doei, yet the 
 person must be stupid who cannot see what Mr. Lincoln's real meaning 
 is. And if any proof were needed of the identity of their principles, it 
 
12 "to all whom it may concekn." 
 
 is to be found in the fact that ]Mr. Lincoln has at last openly come to 
 Garrison's j)latforin. 
 
 William H. Seward, in his celebrated Ohio speech, said : 
 
 " It [slavery] can and must be abolished, and you and I must do it. * * 
 Correct your own error, that slavenj has Conililutional guarantees which 
 may not be released, and ought not to be relinquished. * * * You will 
 soon bring the parties of the country into an effective aggression upon 
 slavery." 
 
 Mark tlie words, ^^ aggression upon slavery!'''' and also the denial of the 
 plain Constitutional provision guaranteeing the right to hold slaves. 
 
 N. P. Banks, now one of Mr. Lincoln's Major-Generals, said in a speech 
 delivered in Maine, in 1855, and while Governor of Massachusetts : 
 
 " Although I am not one of that class of men who cry for the preser- 
 vation of the Union ; though I am willing, in a certain stale of circumstances, 
 TO LKT IT SLIDE, I have uo fear for its perpetuation. But, let me 
 say, if the chief object of the people of this country be to maintain and 
 propagate chattel property in man — in other words, human slavery — this 
 Union cannot and ought not to stand." 
 
 Now, I would ask, in all candor, suppose a prominent Democrat had 
 uttered those sentiments, would he not have been scouted by his party as 
 one infected with political leprosy ? Did the Republican party so treat 
 Governor Banks ? No, indeed ; but the very next session of Congress — 
 the session of 1856 — they elected him Speaker of the national House of 
 Eepresentatives ! 
 
 Still later— in 1858 — in a speech in Massachusetts, we find Mr. Banks 
 turning prophet, and predicting a ^'' military dictatorial Govermnenf^ in 
 this country. lie had no faith in the stability of "j'Vee institutions.'^ 
 He said: 
 
 "1 can conceive of a time when this Constitution shall not be in exist- 
 ence ; wlien we sliall have an absolute military dictatorial Govermnent, 
 transmitted from age to age, with men at its head who ai-e made rulers by 
 military commission, or who claim an hereditary right to govern those 
 over whom they are placed." 
 
 Senator Wade, of Ohio, at a mass meeting in Maine, the same at which 
 Mr. Banks spoke, gave utterance to the following treasonable sentiments : 
 
 " Tlie only salvation of the Union, is to be found in divesting it of all 
 taint of human slavery. Or, let us sweep away this remnant which we 
 call a Union. I go for a Union where all men are equal, or for NO Union 
 at all ; and I go for right." 
 
 And, as if to mark their approval of such doctrines, the Republicans 
 of Ohio, the very next year, re-elected this disunionist to the Senate of 
 the United States. His brother, Hon. Edwin Wade, has, for a number 
 of years, occupied a seat in the House of Representatives, and we find 
 him, in a speech delivered in the House, August 2, 1856, indorsing the 
 treasonable doctrine of his Senatorial brother. We quote : 
 
 " Sir, if the Constitution and the Union are to be used as instruments 
 for propagating hunum bondage, tlu^y cannot be preserved — neither is it 
 desirable that they should. The spirit which has taken possession of the 
 
"TO ALL WHOM IT MA.Y CONUKRN." 13 
 
 slaveholders and their base tools, the Democracy of the free Staten, in 
 the unclean thing of slavery propagandisrn ; and just as sure as animal 
 life perishes in mephitic gases, so sure is it tliat the Constitution and 
 Union must perish when smothered in the fond embraces of tlu'sv allies 
 of human slavery." 
 
 "Allies of human slavery !" — Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, 
 Polk, &c. 
 
 The Hon. Sidney Dean, of Connecticut, is in favor of dissolving the 
 Union, unless freedom — that is, the freedom of the black ract — sliall bo 
 inaugurated in this country. We quote from a sjjeech of his delivered in 
 the House of Representatives, July 23, 18.56 : 
 
 "The issue of all, the reason of all, the basis of all this lies in the sim- 
 ple question, shall freedom or slavery be tlio ruling, pri'dominant feature 
 of the model Republic of the world ? That question can be answered in 
 one way. Freedom, human, personal freedom, the fulfilment of the great 
 sentiment, 'that all men are created free and equal.' " 
 
 Mark the lying interpolation. The words of the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence are, " all men are created equal." The word free docs not 
 occur, and yet it is constantly quoted by abolition speakers and writers, 
 as the Honorable Mr. Dean has quoted it. This is one of the methods 
 by which the people are cheated. He proceeds, 
 
 " This will be the national ruling of this country for future centuries, or 
 the sun of its past glory will set in drapery crimsoned in its own blood 
 ere it reaches a century of its existence." 
 
 Judge Rufus P. Spaulding, a delegate to the Republican Convention. 
 in 1856, and also to the Convention that nominated Mr. Lincoln, said in a 
 speech made in the former Convention : 
 
 " In case of the alternatives being presented, of the continuance of 
 slavery or a dissolution of the Union, I am for dissolution, and I care 
 NOT HOW QUICK IT COMES." 
 
 There is no begging the question with Judge Spaulding ; he speaks 
 the sentiments of his party in plain Saxon. 
 
 Said the Hon. Horace Mann, of Massachusetts, in a speech delivered 
 on the floor of the national House of Representatives: 
 
 " I have only to add, under a full sense of my responsibility to my 
 country and my God, I deliberately say, better disunion, better a 
 SERVILE war, better any thing that God in His providence shall send, 
 than an extension of the bonds of slavery." 
 
 Charles Sumner, the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations 
 in the United States Senate, while advocating the ab,)litii)n of slavery iu 
 a speech delivered in Faneuil Hall, Boston, November 2d, 1855, said : 
 
 "God forbid, that for the sake of the Union, we should sacrifice the very 
 thing for which the Union was made." 
 
 Still later, on the 19th and 20th of May, 18.55, in a speech delivered in 
 the Senate, Mr. Sumner held this revolutionary language : 
 
 " Already has the muster begun. The strife is no longer local, but 
 national. Even now while I speak portents hang on all the arches of the 
 
li " TO ALL WnOM IT MAY CONCERN.' 
 
 horizon, threatening to darken the broad hand, which already yawns with- 
 the mutterings q/" CIVIL war." 
 
 Mr. Sumner, perfectly understanding the dark secrets of his party, 
 heard, even in 1855, " the mutterings of our present deph)rable civil war !" 
 William H. Seward, in his speech in the Senate, April 9, 1856, said : 
 
 "He who found a river in his path, and sat down to wait for the flood 
 to pass away, was not more unwise than he who expects the agitatiop of 
 slavery to cease while the love of freedom animates the bosoms of man- 
 kind." 
 
 And then, after showing that this agitation will lead to war between 
 the North and the South, Mr. Seward suggests to the Pacific States that 
 then would be their time to withdraw from the Union. He continues : 
 
 " Then the free States and the slave States of the Atlantic, divided and 
 warring with each other, would disgust the free States of the Pacific, and 
 they would have abundant cause and justification for withdrawing from 
 A Uxiox productive no longer of peace, safety, and liberty to themselves, 
 and no longer holding up the cherished hopes of mankind." 
 
 This is South Carolina doctrine. 
 
 Again, in his speech at Albany, October 12, 1855, Mr. Seward said : 
 
 " Slavery is not, and never can be, perpetual. It will be overthrown 
 either peacefully and lawfully under this Constitution, or it will work the 
 subversion of the Constitution, together with its own overthrow. Then 
 the SLAVEHOLDERS WOULD PERISH IN THE STRUGGLE." 
 
 Again, in his speech in the Senate, March 11, 1850, Mr. Seward threat- 
 ens the South with "civil war" unless they emancipate their slaves. He 
 says : 
 
 "When this answer shall be given it will appear that the question of 
 dissolving the Union is a complex question that embraces the fearful 
 issue whether the Union shall stand and slavery under the steady, peace- 
 ful action of moral, social, and political causes, bo removed by gi-adual 
 voluntary effort, and with compensation, or whether the UNION shall be 
 Di.ssf>LVED, civil war ensue, bringing on violent but conqylete and imme- 
 diate emancipation. We are now arrived at that stage when that crisis 
 can be foreseen — when we must foresee it. It is directly before us. Its 
 shadow is upon us." 
 
 In plain words, Mr. Seward says to the South : You can have union 
 and the gradual emancipation of slavery, or you shall have disunion, civil 
 war, and inuiunliate emancipation ! This, in plain P'nglish, was his 
 proposition. 
 
 The Hon. Francis E. Spinner, Register of the Treasury Department 
 under Mr. Chase, said, in a speech delivered in 1856, alluding to the 
 possilde failui-e of the Republicans in the effort to elect Fremont : 
 
 " Tlie free North would be left to the choice of peaceful DISSOLUTION 
 OP THE Union, a civil war, which would end in the same, or an uncon- 
 ditional surrender of every principh* held dear by freemen." 
 
 That most charitable, meek, and liberal-minded apostle of Abolitionism, 
 Henry Ward IJeecher, said in 1856, in a speech at New Haven, Ct., whore 
 he proclaimed that "a Sharp's rifle waa a truly moral agency:" 
 
"to all whom it may concern." 15 
 
 "If this poacoful remedy [the biiHot-hox] shoiikl fail to he apjilicd thin 
 year, then the people will count the cost wisely, and decide for them- 
 selves, boldly and firmly, which is the better way, to RISE IN ARMS ANJ> 
 THROW OFF A GOVERNMENT worsc than tlidl. of old King George, or en- 
 dure it another four years, and then vote again." 
 
 In the same speech, Mr. Beechor thus denounced the Constitution of 
 the United States : 
 
 " The Constitution is the cause of every divisicm which this vexed nues- 
 tion of slavei-y has ever occasioned in this country. It has been the foun- 
 tain and father of our troubles, by attempting to hold together, as recon- 
 ciled, two opposing principles, which will not harmonize nor agree. The 
 only hope of the slave is, over the ruins of the Govemmenl and of the 
 American Church. The dissolution of the Union is the abolition of slavery." 
 
 James Watsnn Webb, Mr. Lincoln's minister to Brazil, was a delegate 
 to the Convention that nominated Mr. Lincoln, and also the Convention 
 that nominated Fremont. In his speech, in that Convention, he gave 
 utterance to the following words, which were received with tumultuous 
 cheering and cries of " good :" 
 
 " They [the slaveholders] tell you they are willing to abide by the ballot- 
 box, and are willing to make that last appeal. If we fail there, what tlieii ? 
 We will drive it back, sword in hand ; and, so help me God, believing 
 that to be right, I am with them. [Loud cheers and cries of "Good!"] 
 Northern gentleman, on your action depends the result. You may, with 
 God's blessing, present to this country a name, rallying around it all the 
 elements of the Opposition, and thus we will become so strong that, 
 through the ballot-box, we will save the country. But if a name be pre- 
 sented on which we may not rally, and the consequence is civil war — 
 nothing more, nothing less, but civil war — I ask, then, what is our iirst 
 duty?" 
 
 In the same Convention, the Hon. Erastus Hopkins used these words; 
 
 " If peaceful means fail us, and we are driven to the last extremity, 
 when ballots are useless, then we will make bullets effective." 
 
 The Hon. John P. Hale, United States Senator from New Hampshire, 
 was also a delegate to the Convention, and addresscid it at length. He 
 congratulated the Convention upon the spirit of unanimity with which 
 it had done its work. He said : 
 
 " I believe that this is not so much a Convention to change the Admin- 
 istration of the Government, as to say whether there shall be any Gov- 
 ernment to be administered. • You have assembled not to say whether 
 this Union shall be preserved, but to say whether it shall be a blessing 
 or a scorn and hissing among nations." 
 
 On the 31st of May, 1848, he said: " Let the consequences be what 
 they may, 1 am willing to place myself upon the principle of human right; 
 to stand where the word of God and my own con.science concur in placing 
 me, and there bid defiance to all consequences. And in the end, if this 
 Union, bound as it is to associations, has no other principle of cement 
 than the blood of human slavery, let it sunder.'''' 
 
 Again, on the 12th of July, he said : 
 
 " All the horrors of dissolution I can look steadfastly in the face, before 
 I could look to that moral ruin which must fall upon us when we have so 
 
16 " TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN." 
 
 far prostituted ourselves as to become the pioneers of slavery in the Ter- 
 ritories." 
 
 In the Senate on the 2Gth February, 1856. he said: " I thank Ood that 
 the indications of the pi-csent day seem to promise that the North have at 
 la.st got to the wall, and will go no farther. I hope so. The Senator says 
 there may be a power that shall say ' Thus far shalt thou go. and no far- 
 ther.' [Good! good !] Sir. I hope it will come, and if it comes to blood, 
 let blood come. No, sir, if that issue must come, let it come, and it can- 
 not come too soon. Sir, Puritan blood has not always shrunk from even 
 those encounters ; and when the war has been pi'oclaimed with the knife, 
 and the knife to the hilt, the steel has sometimes glistened in their hands; 
 and when the battle was over, they were not always second best." 
 
 Carl Schurz, appointed by Mr. Lincoln minister to Spain, was a dele- 
 gate to the Chicago Convention, and took a very active part in securing 
 the nomination of Mr. Lincoln. Hear him, in 1860, in a speech at St. 
 Louis : 
 
 "May the God in human nature be aroused and pierce the very soul of 
 our nation with an energy that shall sweep as with the besom of "destruc- 
 tion this abomination from the land. You call this revolution. It is. In 
 this we need revolution ; we will have it ! Let it come!" 
 
 Horace Greeley, to whom Mr. Lincoln is indebted for his nomination at 
 Chicago, has always boldly advocated disunion : 
 
 " If the Cotton States shall become satisfied that they can do better out 
 of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace. The right 
 to secede may be a revolutionary one, but it exists, nevertheless. * * * 
 "We mu.st ever resist the right of any State to remain in the Union and 
 nullify or destroy the laws thereof. To withdraw from the Union is quite 
 anotlier matter. Whenever a considerable section of our Union shall 
 deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures de- 
 signed to keep it in. We hope never to live in a republic whereof one 
 section is pinned to another by bayonets." — Tribune of November 9, 
 1860. 
 
 '• If the Cotton States unitedly and earnestly wish to withdraw peace- 
 fully from the Union, we think they should be allowed to do so. Any 
 attempt to compel them by force to remain, would be contrary to the 
 principles enunciated in the immortal Declaration of Independence, con- 
 trary to the fundamental ideas on which human liberty is based." — Tri- 
 bune, November 26. 1860. 
 
 "If it [the Declaration of Independence] justifies the secession from 
 the IJritish empire of three millions of colonists in 1776, we do not see why 
 it would not justify the secession of five millions of Southerners from the 
 Union in 1861." — Tribune, December 17, 1860. 
 
 " Whenever it shall be clear that the great body of the Southern people 
 have become conclusively alienated from the Union, and anxious to escape 
 from it, we will do our best to forward their views." — Tribune, February 
 23, 1862. 
 
 Tliaddeus Stevens, the Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means 
 in the last Congress, and the acknowledged leader of the Republican 
 party, said recently, in a si)eech at Lancaster : 
 
 " If I believed that the object of this war was to restore the Union as 
 it was, including slavery, I would be against the war." 
 
 Mr. M. E. Conway, a Republican member of Congress from Kansas, 
 
"to all whom it may conckrn." 17 
 
 in a fit of disgust at the "fast and loose" game of (Jerrit Smitli and others, 
 concludes a letter to Mr. Greeley in these wttrds : 
 
 •'As to the Union, I would not give a cent for it. unh-ss it stood as a 
 guarantee for freedom to every man, woman, and child within its entire 
 jurisdiction. I consider the idea that every thing must he sacrificed to 
 the Union utterly preposterous. Wliat was the Union mad(^ for ? Tiiat 
 we should sacrifice ourselves to it ? I, for one, would beg to hi^ excused. 
 As things stand I would sacrifice the Union to Freedom any morning he- 
 fore breakfast." 
 
 Ex-Governor Johnston is in favor of " trampling upon the Constitu- 
 tion" if it stands in the way of "preserving!" — (Heaven save the mark !) 
 — " the nation !" 
 
 These remarks of Governor Johnston were applauded at the Chestnut 
 street League in Philadelphia. 
 
 The atrocious Alfred N. Gilbert, addressing the Philadelphia Union 
 League, said he "would see every woman and child in the South perish," 
 rather than that the Abolition party should fail in itsobjects. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, when a member of Congress, in a speech delivered 
 on the floor of the House, January 12th, 184S, boldly and emphatically 
 advocated the doctrine of secession. He said: 
 
 " Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power have a 
 right to rise up and, shake off the existing government, and form a new 
 one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, 
 a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this 
 right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing gov- 
 ernment may choose to exercise it. ^wy portion of such people that 
 can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as. 
 they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people 
 may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with or near 
 about them, who may oppose their movements. It is a quality of revo- 
 lution not to go by old lines or old laws, but to break up both and to make 
 new ones." 
 
 This speech will be found recorded in the Congressional rtiports of that 
 session. 
 
 So much for a portion only of what has been said and written. These 
 quotations might be continued almost without limit. Now, what has been 
 done ? 
 
 And here it is proper to observe that the Republican party was t)rgan- 
 ized, not as a national, but as a sectional or geographical party. The 
 first meeting called for the purpose of its organization, was held on 
 the 26th of September, 1854, at Auburn, New York, the home of William 
 H. Seward. The object, as stated, was to "organize a Republican party, 
 which should represent the friends of freedom." On that occasion Gen- 
 eral Bruce said : " They would raise a thunder that would shake Southern 
 Slavery to its very centre.'" In proof that its organization was purely 
 sectional, the following resolution, oflfered by General Granger, was 
 adopted : 
 
 " Resolved, That we recommend that a Convention of delegates from 
 the Free States, equal in number to their representatives in Congress, re- 
 
 2 
 
18 "to all whom it may concern." 
 
 spoctivoly, be lielil at the citj^ of Syracuse, on tlie 4th of July, 1856, to 
 nominate candidates for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency of the 
 United States, for the next Presidential election." 
 
 The resolution was adopted with " treinendous cheering." Dr. Snod- 
 grass moved to call this the Republican party. The Convention then 
 adjourned sine die. The place of meeting of the proposed Convention 
 was afterwards changed from Syracuse to Philadel^jhia, where, in pursu- 
 ance of the foregoing resolution, they met and nominated Fremont. 
 
 In 1800, the delegates met at Chicago, and nominated Lincoln. During 
 the proceedings of that Convention, Judge Jessup rose and said : 
 
 That he desired to amend a verbal mistake in the name of the party, 
 It was printed in the resolutions " National Republican party." He 
 wished to strike out the word National, as that was not the name by 
 which the party was properly known. 
 
 The correction was made. Thus originated the sectional party now in 
 power, against which the NATIONAL Democratic party is contending. 
 
 The limits of this address will not suffice to notice one-tenth part of the 
 acts of these conspirators against our national Constitution, which, if all 
 grouped together, would form a picture of political and moral depravity 
 appalling in its hideousness. 
 
 I must be content to select some of the more prominent and glaring. 
 
 I pass over the infamous " personal liberty laws," adopted by Repub- 
 lican Legislatures, designed to render nugatory the fourth clause of the 
 second section of the fourth article of the Constitution. 
 
 I pass by the " Emigrant Aid Societies," the " John Brown raid," and 
 the circiihition of the atrocious " Helper book," with its indorsement by 
 sixty-eight Republican Senators and members. And here let it be observed, 
 that it is perfectly consistent with the philosophy of the human mind, 
 that it may be gradually moulded and prepared by plausible arts and skill, 
 playing upon the passions and prejudices, and even upon the purest and 
 nobUsst impulses of the heart, until a species of moral insanity seizes 
 upon and drags its victim down to irretrievable ruin. 
 
 And tliis is the unfortuu'ite condition to which a large portion of the 
 honest yeomanry of our country have been reduced by the infernal sorcery 
 of the liouds of Abolitionism. With phiusible sophistry they have 
 poisoned the delicate, sensitive, and impressionable mind of a large por- 
 tion of the mothers and daughters, and through their influence, the male 
 youtli of our land ; holding up to distempered fancy, highly colored pic- 
 tures of a false philanthropy, until at length the glorious institutions of 
 our Fathers have become subordinate to the dangerous sentimentalism of 
 a" high. M- law" doctrine, promulgated as a political dogma by him who 
 sits as prime minister at the right hand of Abraham the First. No free 
 people ever lost their liberties by sudden assault. 
 
 The citadel of American liberty, especially, could not have been 
 Btormed without overwhelming discomfiture to the assailants. The 
 attempt has been made to take it by siege, by gradual approaches, by 
 " parallcl.s," to use a now familiar military term. Declarations and proc- 
 lainaliwiis are issued, and acts performed to-day that could not have been 
 
"to all whom it MAV CONCKRX." 19 
 
 declared or performed six inoiitlis aj^o. Tilings were said and done six 
 months ago that could not have l)een said or done six inontlis i)revionsIy, 
 and so on to the beginning of the chapter, wlien Mr. Ijincoln delivered 
 his inaugural, declaring that he had " no constitutional right" to molest 
 or interfere with any of the local institutions of th(^ rebellious States, and 
 when, in December, 1861, Mr. Seward addressed his famous circular let- 
 ter to our ambassadors at the several courts of Europe, explicitly and 
 emphatically declaring the same cardinal truth. 
 
 The worst passions of the human heart, disguised under the iiiantlcs of 
 charity, philanthropes and expediency, have been employi'd witii (i,iabol- 
 ical skill and success, to steal away th(> precious birthright of AuuTican 
 liberty. 
 
 If Satan were only permitted to wage his warfare against our fallen race 
 in all the hideousuess, whci-ein he is represented to appear in the regions 
 of Pandemonium, there would be no need of warning the people against 
 him ; all men would flee in terror at his approach ; but, for some inscruta- 
 ble purpose, he is permitted to assume many bright and alluring forms. 
 Perhaps there is no garment in all his extensive sulphurous, wardrobe, 
 which he wears with greater success in his infernal mission, than tlie drab 
 cloak of canting hypocritical philanthi-opy. 
 
 The horrible condition of our country to-day, is thi> result, or luitural 
 sequence, of the Puritanical meddlesomeness and selfishness of the witch- 
 burning semi-infidel portion of the New England population. There are, 
 it is true,. some large-hearted, noble i>eople in New England; those who, 
 to-day, stand up in their manhood, vainly, and almost hopelessly, strug- 
 gling against a flood of fanaticism : men, for instance, like the venerable 
 Bishop Hopkins, of Vermont, and Winthrop, of Massachusetts, especially 
 merit the eulogy and sympathy of every champion of the Constitution. 
 
 New England traded in negroes — in the Convention that framed the 
 Constitution, she voted to extend the slave-trade twenty years, viz., until 
 1808 — brought them in ships from their native Africa, worked them ou 
 her land, until its impoverished soil rendered it no longer profitable; 
 and then, having made a '• smart" bargain (you may rely upon that), sold 
 them to her Southern neighbors, whom she has never ceased to envy, in 
 the wealth which the rich Southern soil has enabled them to derive from 
 this species of labor. 
 
 By amazing shrewdness and tact in political manoeuvring. New Eng- 
 land, by means of her tariff, has always largely profiti'd from the labor of 
 the slaves, while free from the expense or trouble of supporting them ; 
 but her inordinate avarice and greed of wealth, has always induced a 
 covetous hankering for the possession of that fair domain, whose princely 
 harvests have supplied nearly four-fifths of the vast exportations of our 
 magnificent commerce. And if she could only get possession of those 
 rich cotton and rice plantations of Georgia and South Carolina, having 
 first confiscatt'd the soil and exterminated the own<u-s; and could fill her 
 coffers with pelf, by retaining all the negroes in a condition of bondage, 
 it would be found before a great while, that one-half the population of 
 Massachusetts, Vermont, and the other New England States, would be 
 
2U "to all whom it may concern/ 
 
 engaged in raising cotton and rico, \>y the use of slave labor (tlie only 
 kind of labor, indeed, by which those staples can profitably be raised). 
 The only ditfereuce would be, that for every bale of cotton which the 
 moderately worked negro now produces, his sweat, yea, and blood, too, 
 would be taxed to produce three. 
 
 Heaven help the poor uegro, if he should ever change his present for 
 New England masters I Tlieu would he know the bitterness of slavery ! 
 
 In this connection, it is worthy of remark, that in those States where 
 Abolitionism is most rampant, are found the smallest number of free 
 uegroes. . 
 
 1 have shown that the I'resident, wheu a member of Congress, advo- 
 cated Secession, or revolutionary doctrine ; that all, or most of the leaders 
 of the Kepublicaa party, advocated violent revolutionary doctrines ; that 
 Mr. Seward, promulgated as a political dogma, that there was a law- 
 higher than the Constitution of the United States, to which the funda- 
 mental law of the laud was declared to be subordinate ; that there was an 
 '* irrepressible coutiict" between the slave labor of the South and the free 
 Iab<-)r of the North, in the face of the fact, that the country had advanced 
 from infancy to colossal maturity, under these two systems of labor; 
 showing that, so far from there being a conflict, the two systems have 
 worked together in beautiful harmony ; the producing slave labor of the 
 South, and the manufacturing and conunercial enterprise of the North, 
 operating harmoniously ; a system, in which there was no jar, until the dis- 
 cordant element of New England fanaticism, got the machinery into disor- 
 der. The Abolition Chicago Convention, was only a new act in the drama. 
 The most radical abolitionists in the Convention — those who had preached 
 the strongest disunion doctrines — were the most urgent advocates of Mr. 
 Liiucoln's nomination, overxMr. Seward and all other candidates. Horace 
 (ireeley was particularly active in securing his nomination. Seward was 
 uot trusted by Greeby, i'hillips, Lovejoy, and the radicals of their com- 
 plexion. They apprehended^ that after using the " Amei-icau citizens of 
 African descent," until he (Seward) should be safely seated in the Pi'esi- 
 titutial chair, he would abandon the uegro and " Tylerize" their party ; 
 hence, they would not trust him. The programme had, doubtless, been 
 arranged: Seward was to be used until the eleventh hour, to preach his 
 " iirepressible" philosophy, and then to be thrown overboard. The man 
 who hiid declared tliat •• me government could not permanently exist half 
 slave and half tree," was to be their standard-bearer, and so Abraham 
 Lincoln was uominated. 
 
 i pass over the scenes of the Presidential canvass, the deplorable 
 division and wasting of the strength of the Democratic party ; pass over 
 those days, wheu every Democratic heart was sad at the prospect of 
 triumph, for tho first lime in our histoi-y, of a purely sectional party ; 
 well remembering the warning voice of Washington in his Farewell Ad- 
 dles.-, and the warnings of ail the great Statesmen, as well in the later, as 
 in the early periods of tlie Republic, all of whom seemed to believe that 
 this was ttie only strain which the Union was not strong enough to bear. 
 1 pass over those ribald jests and taunts of tho Republicans, who, when 
 
"to all whom it may conckrx." 21 
 
 Democratic voices were raised in earnest romonstraiico, supplication, and 
 warnino^, against the election of a president committeil to a sectional i)lat- 
 forni, called tluMn in derision, "Union-savers," " Union-shrickers," and 
 other opprobrious epithets, as now the same men call Democrats, " Cop- 
 perheads," and "traitors," in their spite: becauee what was then predict- 
 ed, has been verified by the ghastly logic of events, and because the same 
 warning voice that was disregarded then, is again raised, in pleading ac- 
 cents for the preservation of all that remains of the dearest rights of 
 American freemen. 
 
 As the Democracy truly predicted in 1860, so now the same patriotic 
 voice is heard, crying aloud, " to all whom it may concern," proclaiming 
 to their misguided countrymen, that, dreadful as are the present evils, 
 they are small in comparison with the calamities that are in store for the 
 people, if the present Administration, with its ruinous policy of c nduct- 
 ing the war for conquest, subjugation, confiscation, and emancipation, 
 instead of for the preservation of the Union under the Constitution of 
 our fathers, shall be cojitinued during the ensuing four years. 
 
 Passing all these scenes, I beg leave to remind you of the condition of 
 the country between the period of Mr. Lincoln's election and his inau- 
 guration ; State after State, deliberately holding conventions and pass- 
 ing ordinances of secession — assigning as a reason therefor, that the 
 incoming Administration was committed to an invasion of their Constitu- 
 tional rights ; the people everywhere throughout the Northei-n and 
 Border States in a condition of wild excitement and alarm ; while there, 
 at Springfield, sat the President elect, one line of assurance from whose 
 pen at that juncture might have been potential in averting the horrors that 
 have ensued ; and although he was adjured to write but a single line, and 
 innumerable letters were addressed to him from every quarter, imploring 
 him to speak or write but a word, his ear remained deaf to every ai>peal. 
 His voice was silent, while the gallant ship, freighted with the dearest 
 earthly hopes of humanity, was struggling in the trough ot" a tempestuous 
 sea of passion. He who had been clothed with a moral power for good 
 or for evil, such as but few in history have ever possessed, chose the evil, 
 and refused to utter one syllable of assurance, by which tlie frenzied pas- 
 sions of the hour might have been calmed, and the awful burden of grief 
 and anxiety lifted from the oppressed and bleeding heart of the Nation. 
 
 No, fellow-countrymen, this was not in the programme ! Will it be said, 
 in explanation of this inexplicable silence, that to have spoken or written 
 would have done no good ? I ask, could it by any possibility have done 
 harm ? When men are honestly anxious to avert a calamity, do they not 
 speak and act ? When your child is sick, does not your anxiety to have 
 his malady cured induce you to act promptly — to try every remedy which 
 is placed within reach ? or do you sit down idly, and crack unseemly 
 jokes? He who would thus act, even in the case of an individual, would 
 be justly execrated as a monster of depravity. What then must be 
 thought of one who would so conduct himself when the national life was 
 threatened — his country trembling and writhing in the throes of dis- 
 solution ! 
 
32 "to ALT, WHOM IT MAY CONCERN." 
 
 History records that Nero, the monster of antiquity, fiddled while IJoin. 
 was burning. The President will be fortunate if the impartial pen of 
 history shall fail to record that Lincoln jested while his country was 
 dijing ! 
 
 At length the President leaves Springfield, to travel towards the Capi- 
 tal. In his journey thence, did he manifest that gravity of deportment 
 wiiich might reasonably have been expected, under the circumstances, 
 would have marked the conduct of him who had been chosen to occupy 
 the chair of Washington ? No; he talked flippantly about an "artificial 
 crisis;" he talked about "his whiskers;" he indulged in humorous jests 
 about " nobody being hurt;" and finally, capped the climax of folly in 
 the memorable night journey from Harrisburg to the national Capital, 
 disguised in the costume of a tartan cap, and enveloped in the ample 
 folds of a long military cloak. 
 
 Having reached the Capital in safety, we find, in the character of the 
 inaugural ceremonies, the natural fruit of those revolutionary doctrines 
 which himself and his wily associates had taught for so many years. 
 The cup of American humiliation was filled when a President of the 
 tJnited States was inaugurated under the protection of drawn sabres and 
 glistening bayonets. 
 
 "Oh, what a fall was there, my countrymen ! Then you and I, and all 
 of us fell down, while bloody treason flourished over us." 
 
 And still I might continue, in the language of the immortal bard (only 
 pai-aphrasing a Httle) : 
 
 " Ah, now you weep, and I perceive you feel the dint of pity — good 
 friends — kind friends — let me not stir your hearts and minds to any sud- 
 den flood of mutiny; they that have done this deed are honorable. What 
 private griefs they have, alas, 1 know not. that made them do it ! They 
 are wise and honorable, and will, no doubt, with reason answer you. I 
 come not, friends, to steal away your hearts I I am no orator, as Everett 
 is. But as you know nu> all, a plain, blunt man, that love my country — • 
 and that they know full well that gave me public leave to speak of it! 
 For I have neither wit. nor words, nor uorth ; action, nor utterance, nor 
 power of speech, to stir men's blood — I only speak right on. I tell you that 
 which you yourselves do know; show you my country's wounds, poor, 
 poor dumb mouths, and bid them spi ak for me. But, were I Kverctt, 
 and Everett I, there were one would ruffle up your spirits, and put a 
 tongue in every wound of my country, that should move the stones of 
 America to rise and mutiny." 
 
 The inaugural ceremonies over, the inaugural oath subscribed before 
 high Heaven and the sovereign people, that he, Abraham Lincoln, would 
 '^' preserve, protect, and defend''' the Constitution of the United States, 
 —what followed ? 
 
 'i'wo long months of time — each hour pregnant with the interests of 
 Centuries — wasted and frittered away in a degrading scramble for those 
 places of profit, for which, many had then, and have since, bartered their 
 inestimable birthright. 
 
 During the period intervening between the election and the inaugura- 
 tion of Mr. Lincoln, James Buchanan, who, from long experience in the 
 
"to all whom it may concern." 2 3 
 
 councils of the country, having a perfect uiidorstaiiding of tlio tlu-ory a"<l 
 character of our federative structure of Government; and knowing full 
 well that civil war, once, commenced, would result in consequences too 
 deplorable to be contemplated, endeavored by every means within hi;* 
 power to avert the dreadful catastrophe of armed collision. 
 
 And here I desire to record, that while all my political life — as is wM 
 known — I openly opposed Mr. Buchanan's presidential aspirations (being 
 favorable to another) ; opposed him at Baltimore, in the contest with 
 General Cass; went to Cincinnati, and opposed his nomination there i 
 yes, opposed him in the days of his power and influence, when many who 
 now, with base ingratitude, when the sceptre of political power has de- 
 parted, misrepresent and revile him, crooked the prc^gnant hinges of the 
 knee, that thrift might follow fawning ; now, when the silver crown of ac- 
 cumulated years admonishes him of the hour when the Judge of all the 
 earth shall pronounce whether he kept his oath to ^* preserve, protect, and 
 defend" the Constitution of his country, or broke it on the i)lea of expe- 
 diency ; now, when hypoci'ites, and knaves, and thoughtless men, 
 blinded by partisan prejudice, vpvile, and slander, and would crucify 
 him if they could, I take pleasure in thus publicly repelling these 
 baseless accusations ; and, pointing to his message to Congress, of 
 December, 1860, and then pointing to a desolate, broken, and dis- 
 tracted country, declare that history will vindicate the principles asserted 
 in that message, to wit: that the Government of the United .States de- 
 pends for its perpetuity upon the virtue of the people, and the perfect 
 good faith of the separate States, in maintaining, with scrupulous fidelity. 
 in letter and spirit, the Federal Constitution ; that war between the States 
 would be disunion, and perhaps centralization and despotism. 
 
 During that winter, the Democratic Senators and members struggled 
 hard against the tide of Abolition fanaticism. Various projects of com- 
 promise were introduced, and rejected by the Republicans, one of which, 
 that suggested by Senator Bigler, I always regarded as, more than any 
 other, consistent with our Republican form of Government, viz. : To refer 
 the whole question to a vote of the sovereign people. This, like the 
 others, was rejected. Finally, the famous compromise resolutions of the 
 patriot Crittenden — the life-lo,ng friend of Henry Clay — were intro- 
 duced. The Southern members agreed to accept Mr. Critteudi'n's propo- 
 sition as a settlement of the difficulty, provided the resolutions were pre- 
 sented or indorsed by the Republican members. They (the Southera 
 members) said, that the excitement and alarm existing in the Southern 
 States, was created by the belief tiiat the Republican party had resolved 
 on an aggressive warfare against their Constitutional guarantees ; and in 
 justification of this apprehension, they pointed to the incontrovertible 
 fact, that a war hud been semi-officially inaugurated by sixty-eight Repub- 
 lican Senators and members, endorsing and circulating, under the privilege 
 of their frank, the notorious " Helper Book." They pointed to the John 
 Brown raid into Virginia, at Harper's Ferry, and to the fact that that old 
 cut-throat and horse-thief had been canonized as a hero and martyr, un- 
 rebuked by any portion of the Republican party. Tbey pointed to the 
 
24 " TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN." 
 
 "personal liberty bills," which disgraced the statutes of every State 
 where the Republican pai-ty was di)minant. They pointed to the incen- 
 diary sentiments uttered by the leaders of that party, both in and out of 
 Congress. All this, and more, they cited, to show that the alarm in the 
 Southern States was not unreasonable, but perfectly natural. Now, said 
 they, you Republican gentlemen can disabuse the minds of our constitu- 
 ents, if they are unreasonably alarmed, by voting for these resolutions of 
 Mr. Crittenden, and this whole difficulty may be amicably adjusted ; but 
 if these measures are simply voted for by Democrats, (a two-third vote 
 was necessary to pass the resolutions), the question will not have been 
 changed, but remain precisely as before the vote, and no good will have 
 been effected. 
 
 Now, here was the question of peace or war suspended, as it were, by a 
 thread — the dearest interests of mankind dependent on a ballot. On one 
 side, peace, prosperity, national power, and constitutional liberty — as 
 Washington and our fathers interpreted the name of liberty — on the 
 Other side, war! civil war ! with all its accumulating horrors ; " States 
 dissevei-ed, di<ci>rdant, belligerent," demoniac hate, bi'others slain by 
 brothers, desolated fields and burning cities, the widow's anguish, the 
 orphan's plaintive wail, the hissing scorn of freedom's votaries in every 
 land, the imprecations coming up from generations of America yet in the 
 womb of time ; and, above all, and beyond all, the I)lasting curse of an 
 offended God, who, when He had taken upon Himself the nature of man, 
 said : " Blessed are the peace makers, for they shall be called the chil- 
 dren of God." In view of this choice between the good and the evil, be- 
 tween blessings and curses, how did the Republican members of Congress 
 vote on these resolutions of the Kentucky Statesman ? Against them to a 
 man ! And raised the bloody banner of fratricidal war ! 
 
 Merciful Heaven ! was hell un^iarred and the demons of perdition per- 
 mitted at that critical moment to visit our earth, to conjure with devilish 
 incantation those men in the Senate-house clothed with power and re- 
 sponsibility so vast ? 
 
 How else shall we account for this "most foul and unnatural" conduct? 
 Can we, by applying the ordinary rules of interpretation, account satis- 
 factorily for the rejection by the Republicans in Congress of those peace 
 resolutions? We cannot. It was not in the programme ! Other efforts 
 were made by the Democrats. The Peace Congress was convened, and 
 adjourned with the same result. So fearful were the Abolitionists that 
 measures might be adopted in that Convention wliioli would destroy their 
 infernal plot, that letters were written by Senators and members to 
 the Republican Governors of the vai-ious States, urging the appointment 
 of men as delegates to the Conventicm who could be relied upon to oppose 
 all compromise. Here is a specimen of these prcK-ious epistles, written 
 by United States Senator Chandler, of Michigan, to the Governor of that 
 State :— 
 
 •' To His Exrellency, Justin Blair: 
 
 *• Governor Hingham and myself telegraphed you on Saturday, at the 
 request of Massachusetts and New York, to send di^legates to the Peace 
 
"TO ALL WHOM IT MAY OONCKRN. 2o 
 
 or Comproiniso Congress. Tlioy admit tliat wp wcro right and that they 
 wero wrong, that no Ropuhlican Stato should have sent didi-gatcs. hut 
 they are here and cannot get away. Oliio, In<liiiMa. and Khode Island 
 are caving in, and there is danger of Illinois, and now tliey heg us fur 
 God's sake to come to their rescue, and sav(^ the Repuhlican ])arty from 
 rupture. I hope you will send stiff-backed men or none. The whole 
 thing was gotten up against my judgment and advice and will end in 
 thin smoke. Still I hope as a matter of courtesy to some of our erring 
 brethren that you will send the delegates. 
 
 *' Truly, your friend, 
 
 "Z. CHAXDLEU. 
 
 "P. S. — Some of the manufacturing States think that a fiijiit would ho 
 awful. Without a little blood-letting this Union will not, in my estima- 
 tion, be worth a rush. 
 
 "Washington, February 11, 1861." 
 
 Pennsylvania's most exemphiry Executive (?) Andrew G. Curtin, sent to 
 that Peace Congress delegates who he well knew would vote against all 
 compromise. Why did he select David Wilmot as a delegate to that 
 convention ? Did he, like Senator Chandler, feel greater solicitude 
 to save the "Republican party" than to save the Union? Did 
 he also think that a little " blood-letting" would be good for the 
 country ? I charge upon Governor Curtin, that by sending Judge 
 Wilmot to that convention, he made himself quite as responsible for 
 his share in pi-eventing the adoption of all propositions of compromise 
 and peace wiiich were there persistently voted down, as if he had been 
 present, and had spoken and voted as Judge Wilmot spoke and voted. 
 
 It is impossible to crowd into the limits necessary to be observed 
 all the evidence of this most atrocious plot that, like the spectres 
 in King Richard's slumber, pass in rapid review before the mental vision. 
 
 Referring again to the period after Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, while 
 the patriots were all engaged in saving as much of the country as would 
 hold the spoils they were industriously appoi-tioning. Commissioners from 
 South Carolina arrived in Washington, and while these men were being 
 hoodwinked by Mr. Seward promising them that the status at Fort Sum- 
 ter should not be disturbed, and the Commissioners, on their part, prom- 
 ising that the gallant Major Anderson and his little band of heroes in 
 Foi-t Sumter should have every thing in the way of provisions supplied 
 them, until some satisfactory arrangement could, perhaps, be agreed 
 upon, the Administration were engaged in secretly fitting out an expe- 
 dition in the harbor of New York to provision and garrison the fort, know- 
 ing full well that, under the circumstances, these vessels, or the fort 
 itself, would be fired upon. They calculated rightly. An overt act of 
 war was perpetrated; our glorious Star-spangled Banner desecrated, the 
 heart of the Northern masses fired, "the Republican party saved," and 
 the Union, it may be, lost! 
 
 The events of that culminating period will form a dark chapter in 
 the history of this bloody drama. It will be recollected that in the lat- 
 ter part of May or first of June, 1861, the telegraph offices in the princi- 
 pal cities were taken possession of by the Governraeat authorities, and 
 
2G " TO ALL WHOM IT MAY C0NCI:RN." 
 
 among tlio copies of telegrams seized were those of a certain James E. 
 Hurve}', who had been appointed minister to Portugal. These telegrams 
 revealed the fact that Mr. Harvey had been in correspondence with the 
 Rebels at (Charleston, South Carolina, and had communicated to them the 
 fact that a fleet of vessels was fitting out in the harbor of New York, de- 
 signed to provision the garrison at Fort Sumter. This information caused 
 the Kebel authorities to determine to fire upon Fort Sumter, when the 
 said fleet should appear off the Charleston bar. On the 7th of June, the 
 New York Tribune, and the Press generally, violently assailed Mr. Harvey 
 for having betrayed the secrets of the Administration in giving this infor- 
 mation to the Rebels. When thes-e newspaper articles reached Mr. Har- 
 vey at Lisbon, he wrote a "Card," dated Lisbon, July 7, 1861, which was 
 published in the Philadelphia " North American,'' on the 27th of that 
 month, wherein he exonerates himself by declaring that all of the aforesaid 
 correspondence was by authority of the President and Cabinet, In his 
 card he says : 
 
 "While holding an official position I am precluded from making decla- 
 rations which would at once give a satisfactory answer to these slanders." 
 " I do not choose to utter a word at this time, which would in any manner 
 impair the action of the Government, or subject others to harsh and un- 
 just comment, when I know that their motives, like my own, were the 
 purest and best." 
 
 '' The fact is, the Government was in possession of every tittle of the 
 evidence which had accumulated in Washington long before the public 
 seizure was ordered ; several weeks before 1 left there, and before 1 had 
 received or accepted any commission. If there was any thing to know it 
 was known fully and entirely, as Avill be shown whenever necessary. I 
 assert th'^ fact distinctly, without condition or reservation. I submitted 
 to their inspection every line received b}^ telegraph, and never held any 
 other correspondence but that, direct or indirect." 
 
 Did Mr. Harvey state the case truly ? If he did not, why has he been 
 retained in his important mission from that day till this ? 
 
 ]f he did, what object had the Administration in revealing the fact 
 of this preparation to provision the fort ? Was it that an overt act of 
 rebellion might be committed, " the Northern heart fired," and, in the 
 language of Senator Chandler, in his letter to Governor Blair, " the Re- 
 publican party saved from rupture ?" or did Mr. Seward believe it to be 
 his duty, as he subsequently avowed, to take care " that the war should be 
 begun by the enemies of the Union ?" 
 
 Well, Sumter was fired upon, the Northern heart 'was fired, and then 
 came the call for seventy-five thousand troops, and then came from the 
 mountains and the valleys, from the rostrum and the anvil, from the mer- 
 chant's desk and the laborer's ditch, from the gilded saloons of luxury 
 and the rugged cot of penury, from Democrats and Republicans — one 
 grand, spontaneous shout, " The Union ! it must and shall be preserved!" 
 
 Then came " Bull Run ;" then the resolutions by Congress, declar- 
 ing the war to be " for the preservation of the Constitution and the resto- 
 ration of the Union, with all the rights and dignity of the several States 
 unimpaired," and that when " these objects" should be " attained the war 
 
"to all whom it may conceun." 27 
 
 ouj^lil io cease," passed unanimously except tw(t votes, one a Xnrtlicru 
 Abolilionists, the other a Southern Secessionist. In the extremity of 
 alarmcaused by the Bull Run rout, the Republicans voted with the De- 
 mocrats for these resolutions. 
 
 Under the belief that this was the real purpose of the Administration, a 
 vast army of volunteers was obtained, and when the Administration found 
 itself secure behind an impregnable wall of bayonets, the prosecution of 
 the programme was resumed. 
 
 This naiTative having been thus extended, it is out of the question to 
 follow step Ijy step the insidious approaches upon the citadel of liberty, 
 over a violated Constitution, under the hypocritical mask of pretending 
 to defend it. Under the plausible cant, "the Union," "the flag," "the 
 Constitution," and "the unconditional support of the Government," 
 appeals so potent as to reach every patriotic heart; the masses of the 
 people were for a long time deceived, and many still remain under the 
 fatal delusion ; notwithstanding that every promise for the restoration 
 of the Union has been broken, and that blessed consummation put more 
 than ever remote by an insane policy, which looks to the sudden emanci- 
 pation of four millions of negroes, and their elevation to the condition of 
 white men. Feeble man warring in blind fanatical fury, against the im- 
 mutable laws of God. whose wisdom is made manifest in an inequality 
 in creation " spreading through all life, extending through all extent," 
 observable alike in the vegetable, the mineral, and the animal kingdoms, 
 one seed producing a delicious fruit, another the deadly upas, the beauti- 
 ful pearl taken from its ocean bed of innumerable and to tlie superficial 
 mind, worthless, yet in the wise economy of nature, equally valuable peb- 
 bles ; while in the higher order of creation we have a Milton and the 
 babbling idiot, a Caligula, and a Howard, a Washington, and a Lincoln •' 
 
 Nearly every vestige of the Constitutional guarantees to the citizen 
 has been ignored, or crushed beneath the heel of tyrannical usurpatii>n. 
 
 While the flag of our country is held aloft, as the symbol of the Union 
 of the States, glittering in the splendor of its thirty-four stars, we have 
 it semi-officially announced, by a high functionary of the administration, 
 no less a personage than the Solicitor of the War De[)artment. that the 
 light of ten at least of those stars, is to be extinguished. State lines, 
 says Mr. Whiting, enforcing Charles Sumner's pet scheme, must be 
 obliterated ; the domain reduced to a territorial condition ; its inhabitants 
 made vassals, with no rights save those which the conqueror chooses to 
 accord to them. Virginia! the Old Dominion! the "mother of States," 
 the State whose very atmosphere is sacred as having first inflated the 
 kings that gave pulsation to the great heart of Washington ; that caught 
 his last expiring breath, and floated his pure spirit up to the eternal 
 throne of heaven ; the State, wliose " sacred soil'.' — yes ! sacred, indeed, not- 
 withstanding the derision in which the word has been profaned by Aboli- 
 tion traitors, who hate the memory of the ddve- holder Washington — 
 above whose name Wendell Phillips, of Massachusetts, in a public lecture, 
 has placed " on the scroll of fame," the name of Toussainl Louverture, 
 the black demon of St. Domingo — whose sacred soil, I say, received 
 
28 "to all whom it may concern." 
 
 Wasliinffton's precious mortal remains ! the State of Patrick Henry ! 
 and where his immortal words were hurled against British tyranny — " As 
 FOR ME, GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE MR DEATH !" — the State of Jeflerson, 
 Madison, Monroe, and a host of patriots and martyrs to civil liberty ! — the 
 State that gave to the Union — a free and princely gift — all that Northwest 
 Territory, from which have risen some of the grandest commonwealths in 
 the coufi'deracy ! — the State, whose influence, statesmanship, and warriors, 
 more than all others, contributed to achieve for us, and bequeathed to us, 
 the priceless blessings of constitutional freedi>in I — this is the State, to 
 say nothing of all the others, that Mr. Solicitor William Waiting — gorged 
 with the swill of official patronige, puffed as a toad in his own conceit, 
 redol(>nt of perfume from his darling Africans, with the heart of a spider, 
 and the wisdom of a donkey — declares in five solid columns of type, must 
 be reduced to a territorial condition ! Fellow-citizens of America, this 
 is what is called, "■unconditional" unionism ! 
 
 The next step was to abolitionize the army, by getting rid, under vari- 
 ous pretexts, of as much as possible of the Democratic element among the 
 field officers. Those who were known to be Democrats, incorruptible and 
 true to the legitimate objects of the war, were, from time to time, removed, 
 and their places filled with officers who sympathized with the Abolition 
 projects of emancipation, confiscation, negro troops, and subjugation. 
 
 Thus we find that McClellan, the idol of the army, who thrice saved 
 the Capital from capture ; whose brilliant campaign in Western Vir- 
 ginia caused him to be hailed by the public voice as the man for the occa- 
 sion after the first Bull Run ; whose thorough military science first 
 organized and then disciplined a splendid army, and compelled the enemy 
 to abandon his strong position at Manassas; who, to splendid engineer- 
 ing qualities, adds a thorough comprehension of the theory of war, 
 understanding perfectly when caution or strategy is desirable, and when 
 dashing impetuosity is necessary, with a temperament peculiarly adapted 
 to eitlur; whose much-derided pick and spade enabled him to cap- 
 ture the powerful fortifications at Yorktown with scarcely the loss of a 
 battalion, and which .said pick and .spade have since been adopted by every 
 general who has been succes.sful ; whose rapid movements forced the 
 enemy to make a stand at Williamsburg, there to be beaten and discom- 
 fited ; who, after driving the enemy into his capital, approached to within 
 sight of its steeples, and who pledged his military reputation, that, if fur- 
 nished with McDowell's Corps of forty thousand men, which had been 
 promised him, and which was lying idly at Fredericksburg, he would march 
 into the enemy's ca[iital in less than twelve hours after the word forward 
 should be given ; who repelled the desperate as.sault on his left wing at Fair 
 Oaks, although, to do so, a lack of sufficient troops required him to endan- 
 ger his right and centre; whose brilliant achievement at Hanover Court 
 House kept open the communication with McDowell's Corp.s in the anx- 
 ious, though vain hope, that the Admini.stration would give him the troops, 
 in expectation of receiving which his military plans had been adopted; who, 
 when finally abandoned to his fate in those dismal pestilential swampa 
 of the Chickahominy, his brave army daily reduced by sickness and death, 
 
"to all whom it may C'ONCKKN. 2'.) 
 
 and wliilo tlie cnouiy, kno\viii<j Lis wcnkncss and its cause, was f^atlicring 
 up from every quarUsr iiu army to crush liiui — froui C\>riiitli wIkic tiicy 
 doliberately waliicd away from Hallcck, and from tlu- 8lu-iiandoali N'allcy 
 where Banks had been driven off by Stonewall Jackson — with military 
 genius, cool brain, and bravo heart, and while assaulted l)y overwhelming 
 odds, swung his army around over thirty miles of territory, with but one 
 I'oad for his trains, and after seven days of continuous and desperate 
 assaults upon his lines, safely encamped his gallant siddiei'fe upon the 
 banks of the James River, thus executing a retreat, which, should he 
 gain a hundred battles, history will record as the grandest and most 
 glorious of his military achievements ; who — when General Pope, the pet 
 of the Administration, " whose head-quarters were in the saddle," whose 
 " strategy was to find the enemy," and who knew no such thing in mili- 
 tary science as "base lines of retreat," was forced by General Lee to 
 learn that lesson, behind the fortifications which ilcClellan's pick and 
 spade had prepared for him around Washington — was called with trem- 
 ulous accents, through pallid and quivering lips to save, as twice be- 
 fore he had saved, the Capital from capture, gathered up with ama- 
 zing rapidity the scattered, disheartened, and demoralized forces of a 
 routed army, marched against the victorious and exultant foe, drove 
 him from his well selected position at South Mountain, followed him rap- 
 idly and again attacked and routed him at Antietam, thus saving Pennsyl- 
 vania and Maryland from the devastation of invasion and the Capital 
 from capture ; then, giving his weary soldiers a brief and ai)S()lutely 
 necessary respite for recuperation, and to obtain shoes for their naked 
 feet, crossed the Potomac in pursuit, took possession of the numerous 
 mountain gaps, and while the whole country was excited to exultation in 
 admiration of his triumphant march — suddenly, to the amazement of sol- 
 diers and civilians, during the prevalence of a violent snow-storm, re- 
 ceived an order at his camp, directing him to report at Trenton, New 
 Jersey ! 
 
 The blinding snow-drifts that eddied round the tents of that brave Po- 
 tomac Army, chilled their manly forms, but under the vigilant care of 
 their beloved counnander, their hearts were warm. This order from 
 Washington was an ice-bolt driven against every soldier's and civilian's 
 heart, who still fondly clung to the hope of a restored Union under the 
 Constitution of our Fathers, and desired to see the war conducted accord- 
 ing to the principles of humanity and civilization. 
 
 And so might fame sound her trumijet in eulogizing strains of Buell, 
 and Fitz John Porter, and Naglee, and Andi-ew Porter, and Burns (not 
 Burnside who distinguished himself only in capturing what was onco 
 regarded as an impregnable fortress, to wit, the DOMICILE OF AN 
 American citizen, and taking prisoner its garrison in the person of 
 Clement L. Vallandigham). but a braver soldier and a better man, a 
 gentleman as well as a soldier, who knows tlie value and loves with true 
 devotion the institutions of his country ; and a host of others who have 
 been suspended under various shallow pretexts. 
 
 The places of these officers have been filled with some honorable excep 
 
30 "to all whom it may concern." 
 
 tioii^, Imt \vlicrcv(»r it \v;is practioahlc, u'ith inon wlio have provod snbsor- 
 vicut tools and parasitcH at tlu^ footstool of power. A majority of the 
 field officers in the higher ranks are of the stripe of Butler, Iligginson, 
 Hunter, Shurz. Hooker, whose campaign against McClellan before the 
 War Investigating Committee at Washington, was about as successful as 
 his campaign against Kichniond via Chancellorsville ; and McNeill and 
 Rousseau, who in a public speech in Pennsylvania, in the fall of 1863, 
 spoke of the " Copperheads and traitors who go about cheering for Mc- 
 Clellan." 
 
 Having got the army iirmly in hand by means of this system among 
 the officers, tlie Administration proceeded gradually to bolder and more 
 shameful invtisions of the rights of the people. It would be merely su- 
 pererogator}' to recapitulate. Not a man or woman, and scarcely a child, 
 who is not familiar with these constantly recurring and most atrocious 
 assaults upon the liberty of the citizen. When I use the term liberty, I 
 do not mean licentiousness. I speak of undoubted, indefeasible rights, 
 which Webster said belonged to the people as undoubtedly and "as natu- 
 rally as the right to breathe, and the right to eat." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln boldly assumes, in his letter to tlie Ohio committee, of 
 which Mr. Pendleton was chairman, that, in time of war, he becomes the 
 embodiment of all three of the co-oi-dinate branches of Government — the 
 law maker, the law interpreter, and the law executor ! He goes even a 
 step further, and makes laws unknown to our system of jurisprudence — 
 the law of banishment, for instance — and he executes this self-established 
 edict daily, upon all classes of citizens, through his minions sometimes, 
 and occasionally — as in the case of Mr. Vallandingham — by a direct order 
 from himself. Yet Mr. Lincoln has taken a solemn oath to "preserve, 
 protect, and defend" a Constitution whose eighth Amendment reads thus : 
 
 "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessivt; fines imposed, nor 
 cruel and unusual punishments inHicted." 
 
 The Constitution ordains (in Article 2d of the Amendments) that, 
 
 " The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be in- 
 fri titled." 
 
 Vi't Mr. Lincoln has deprived tlie i>eople, in whole districts far remote 
 from scenes of hostilities, of this solemnly declared right. 
 
 The Constitution declan^s that, 
 
 "la all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a 
 speedy and pul)lic trial, by an impartial jury of the 8tate and district 
 wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have 
 been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and 
 cause of the accusation ; to l)e confronted with the witnesses against 
 him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, 
 and to have the assistance of counsel for his defence." 
 
 Yet Mr. Lincoln has violated every one of these provisions in thou- 
 sands of iu^laiiccs. 
 
 The Con.-tliution declares that, 
 
 "No person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous 
 crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in 
 
"to aij. witom it may cokckkx." 31 
 
 cases arising in tho land or naval forces, or in the mililia, when in uclual 
 service in time of war or public danger." 
 
 Yet Mr. Lincoln has violated this l>ene(ic( iit provision. 
 ' The Constitution declares (Art. 4, Amcii(liiuiit<) tluit, 
 
 '• The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, 
 and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be vio- 
 lated ; and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, sup|)orted 
 by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched 
 and the persons or things to be seized." 
 
 Yet Mr. Lincoln has violated, in numerous instances, this wise pro- 
 vision. The Constitution declares, in the third Amendment, that, 
 
 " No soldier shall in time of peace be quartered in any house, without 
 the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to In- pre- 
 scribed by law." 
 
 Yet Mr. -Lincoln, through his subordinates, violated this sacred pro- 
 visions in numerous instances. 
 
 The Constitution declares, in the first Amendment, that, 
 
 " Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion 
 or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of 
 speech, or of the press ; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, 
 and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." 
 
 Yet Mr. Lincoln is constantly incarcerating some, and I)ani.>liing 
 others, whose manhood will not succumb to tyrannical usurpation, pre- 
 ferring death itself to a craven surrender of liberty. 
 
 The Constitution provides that, Congress alone shall have power to 
 suspend the writ of habeas corpus — that great bulwark against oppres- 
 sion. And this is manifest, from the fact that the allusion to its suspen- 
 sion is found among the negative Congressional provisions. Tlie words 
 are in the fourth clause of the ninth Section of Article 1, and read 
 thus : 
 
 " Th^ privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, 
 unless when in cases of reliellion or invasion, the pul)lic safety may re-, 
 quire it." 
 
 That is. Congress shall not have power to suspend it except in desig- 
 nated cases, and for a specific time ; but where is the shadow of authority 
 giving to Congress a right to delegate this stupendous power of a sweeping 
 suspension to a co-ordinate branch of the Government, exti'nding a 
 power, in fact, which it does not itself possess ? Monstrous perversion of 
 the evident meaning of tlie clause ! Besides, the design evidently was, 
 that the writ might be temporarily suspended only in districts where 
 actual hostilities .should exist; where, in fact, ju<lieial authority migiit 
 become too feeble, because of violent commotion in any particular dis- 
 trict, to afford protection to the citizens. 
 
 Is there any such commotion in tlie States of New York, New Jersey, 
 Pennsylvania, or Ohio, as to render it necessary to the public safety, that 
 every citizen of these conunonwealths shall be made liable to arrest by a 
 deputy provost-marshal ; — perhaps, by mistake, and, perhaps, from the 
 
32 "to all whom it m\y conukrx." 
 
 malice of some informant, who may seek a conveniont method of wreaking 
 a petty vengeance ; — and the innocent victim hurried off, ignorant even 
 of the nsiture of the accusation — thrown into a fortress, and his case, it 
 may be, forgotten by the tyrants, through whose infamous despotism he 
 may languish even unto death ? 
 
 Hence, in his proclamation suspending the writ of habeas corpus, Mr. 
 Lincoln has violated another provision of the Constitution. 
 
 Sections, Art. 1, of the Constitution, provides " for organizing and dis- 
 ciplining the militia, and for governing such part of tliem as may be em- 
 ployed in the service of the United States, re^ervinsrio the States, respect- 
 ively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the 
 militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress." 
 
 Now, no legal sophistry, or hair-splitting, can so impose upon common 
 sense, as to induce the belief that Mr. Lincoln has not violated this pro- 
 vision of the Constitution, by sanctioning a conscription which creates a 
 huge consolidated army, in whose ranks, all the States ma.y be repre- 
 sented in each company of each regiment. Thus the New York and 
 Pennsylvania soldier, and the Vermont and Massachusetts, and Oliio and 
 Michigan and Wisconsin men, may be mixed up in every company ; de- 
 stroying that State identity, that State pride, that State sympathy, and, 
 not least, that State protection, which the framers of the Constitution 
 designed both for the efficiency of the army, in fostering State emulation, 
 and to guard against that consolidation, which might lead to centraliza- 
 tion aud usui-patiou of the legitimate sovereignty of the States. 
 
 The Constitution requires (Section 3, Article 2d) that the President 
 shall " take care that the laws he faithfully executed.'^ 
 
 May it not be asserted, truthfully, that Mr. Lincoln haw "taken care" " 
 that the laws shall not be faithfully executed ? 
 
 Witness the arrest and incarceration of that eminent jurist and fearless 
 patriot, the venerable Judge Carmichael, for " faithfully" maintaining the 
 law, under the responsibility imposed by his judicial oath. 
 
 The Constitution declares (Section 1, Article 3) : That "the judicial 
 power of. the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and 
 in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and 
 establish." And (in Section 2, of the same Article) : " The judicial power 
 shall extend to all cases in law or equity." 
 
 Yet Mr. Lincoln has violated this provision by assuming judicial powers. 
 
 The Constitution (in Section 2, Article 3, 3d clause), declares that 
 ''The trial of all crimes, except in cas(\s of impeaclunent, shull be by 
 jury, and such trial shall be held in the State, where the said crimes shall 
 have been committed." 
 
 Yet Mr. Lincoln arrests men in one State for alleged crime, and sends 
 them to a fortress in another State, without a trial in either place ; and, 
 furthermore, banishes men into " the enemies' country," thereby recog- 
 nizing the Southern Confederacy, while maintaining that the States com- 
 posing it are still within the Union, and subject to the laws of Congress, 
 such as emancipation, confiscation, &c., &c. 
 
 The Constitution declares (in Section 3, Article 3), that " no person shall 
 
" TO ALL WHOM IT MAY COXCKKN." o3 
 
 be convicted of treason, unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the 
 same overt act, or on confession in open court." Of course, the clause 
 means, tliat if tlio conviction shall be bj'- witnesses, they shall bo examined 
 m open court. T have heard the puerile argument advanced, that while 
 the "confession" of an accused must be in " open court," vet if convict- 
 ed by "witnesses," it may be before a court-martial, or a provost-mar- 
 shal's board. To such wretchc^d shifts are tliey driven to i>alliate their 
 iniquity, torturing and perverting the plainest language ever written. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln has clearly violated this important protection to those 
 accused, but guiltless of the high crime of treason. 
 
 The Constitution declares (in Section 3, Article 3, second clause), that 
 
 "No attainder of treason shall wm-k corruption of blood, or forfeiture, 
 except during the life of the person attainted." 
 
 Yet Mr. Lincoln, by signing the Confiscation Bill of the last Congress, 
 has violated this provision, not only in the natural and practical effect of 
 the law, but according to the interpretation now claimed for it, by his 
 warmest political adherents and admirers. 
 
 The Constitution declares (Section 3, Article 4), that 
 
 " No new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any 
 other State." 
 
 Yet the State of Virginia has been split in twain, so far as the abolition 
 majority in Congress and Mr. Lincoln has been able to do it. 
 
 The Constitution declares (in the second clause of Section 3, Article 4), 
 that 
 
 "Nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice 
 any claims of the United States, or of any particular State.''^ 
 
 Has not the partition of Virginia "prejudiced" the claims of that "par- 
 ticular State ?" And inasmuch as Mr. Lincoln and his followers pretend 
 that the war is waged to restore the States, including Virginia, to the 
 Union, what becomes of this express and emphatic declaratory clause ? 
 In signing that bill, Mr. Lincoln violated this clause of the Constitution. 
 
 Article 9 of the Amendments declares, 
 
 " The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be 
 construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." 
 
 Yet, Mr. Lincoln, either wilfully or iguorantly, has " construed" 
 numerous important provisions according as "military necessity" or 
 expediency, rendered it convenient, and against the interpretation of plain 
 common sense. Witness the attempt to have the electoral vote of several 
 States, controlled by one-tenth of the population. 
 
 Article 10 of the Amendments declares that : 
 
 " The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, 
 nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, 
 or to the people." 
 
 Yet, the sovereign rights of the States are violated every day by Mr. 
 Lincoln, under the plea of necessity, expediency, and by gross perversion 
 of the language of the instrument. 
 
 The Constitution provides (in Section 2, Article 4, 3d clause, ) that, 
 3 
 
34 "to all whom it may coxceun,'" 
 
 " No person hold to service or labor in one State, under the laws there- 
 of, escaping- into another, shall, in consequence of any law or rej^ulation 
 therein, be discliarged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered 
 up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." 
 
 Xow, Mr. Lincoln is bound by his oath to see that this provision is just 
 as faithfully observed in times of commotion and civil war, so far as it 
 extends to citizens not ill rebellion against the United States, as in time 
 of peace, yet the clause has become obsolete. In fact, the emancipation 
 proclamation virtually wipes it out as with a sponge. Hence, Mr. Lin- 
 coln has violated this provision. 
 
 Finally, the Constitution declares (in the 2d cluuse of the 6th Article) 
 that, 
 
 " This Constitution and the laws which shall bo made in pursuance 
 thereof," "shall In' the SUPREME law of the land; and the judges in every 
 State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or laws of 
 any State to the contrary notwithstanding." 
 
 And yet Mr. Lincoln has audaciously assumed that his will shall be the 
 sovereign and supreme law. And judges in the several States who have 
 acted in conformity with their oaths to support this provision of the Con- 
 stitution, have been, by hirelings and parasites, denounced as traitors to 
 their Government, and even the judicial ermine desecrated in the inflic- 
 tion upon them of personal violence. In permitting this, Mr. Lincoln 
 has violated the sixth Article of the Constitution. 
 
 Now, my fellow-countrymen, if any of you will take a copy of the 
 Constitution of the United States and read it carefully, you will find that 
 there is scarcely a fragment of it left. The President and his partj^ in 
 Congress have torn it into ribbons. Will it be said that these innova- 
 tions are warrantable on account of the civil strife in which we are 
 engaged. How utterly fallacious is this excuse ! These are the very 
 times when the sacred provisions of the Constitution should be most jeal- 
 ously guarded ; when all should cling to it as " the mariner clings to 
 the last plank, when night and the tempest surround him." What would 
 be thought of the commander of a vessel who, when the hurricane was 
 raging, and his tempest-tossed bark straggling in the trough of the sea, 
 and knowing that he was in the vicinity of dangerous reefs, should throw 
 overboard his chart and his compass ? 
 
 Time and space admonish me that I must bring this narrative to a 
 close. A folio voIuuk; would not contain all the usurpations of this most 
 extraordinary Administration. The servants of the people have assumed 
 to be their masters, and have so conducted themselves during the last 
 three years. 
 
 The Hercules of American liberty is now writhing in the toils of the 
 anaconda of despotism. Bravely the young gi;int struggles for mastery. 
 While the slimj- coils twine round his lithe and graceful limbs, millions 
 beh<dd the desperate encounter, and the hearts of freemen throb with al- 
 ternate hope and fear, as their prayers ascend to Almighty God, that 
 vititory may perch on the brow of liberty's champion, and the monster 
 be crushed within his grasp. 
 
"to all whom ri' may conckkn." 35 
 
 Mon are as nothinjj^ iu this ^vvnt crisis. Whole generations of men 
 pass, in their ngiihir order, into tiio sepulchri- of oblivion. But few in- 
 dividuals live, oven in memory, beyond a suee.eeding generation. Yet, in 
 the progress of time, there are epoch.s wliich live for ages; to bo re- 
 ferred to by posterity with eilher blessings or curses. Wo are passing 
 tlirougli one of those periods now ! The cause of American liberty is a 
 sacred trust, which each generation of Americans is bound by every 
 principle of honor to transmit unimpaired to its successor. This prin- 
 ciple must not be surrendered now. If it should, upon this generation 
 will rest the merited execration of those that are yet in the womb of 
 time. 
 
 It is gratifying to reflect that the virtue and good sense of the Democ- 
 racy have been so signally manifested, in the selection of those in whose 
 persons these great principles are, as we tru-st, to be vindicated. 
 
 Why should I particularly allude to those candidates, my fellow- 
 countrymen ? You would not have me pronounce a eulogy upon George 
 B. McClellan ! There are some things whose attractions are not en- 
 hanced by eulogium : they speak for themselves. To say that the dia- 
 mond is pure, and clear, and sparkling ; that no base material can corrode 
 its fair surface, or cloud its lustre, would not enhance the ju.st admiration 
 entertained for the jewel. Then why write words of commendation of 
 one whose bravery and skill while iu servicis and whose modest deport- 
 ment and good taste while in retirement, have commended themselves to 
 every unprejudiced mind ? There he stands, clothed in the mail of a 
 spotless reputation, from youth to vigorous manhood — invulnerable ! 
 Let the shafts of Abolition malice be hurled with all the force which im- 
 potent rage may lend to desperation. Blunted and broken against his 
 impenetrable armor, they fall harmless at his feet ; save only those which, 
 glancing, inflict ghastly wounds upon his more vulnerable adversaries. 
 
 As much might justly be said of George H. Pendleton : the profound 
 lawyer — the able and fearless statesman — the C'liristian gentleman. "Who 
 dare assail him ? Even Malice is dumb, and the tongue of Slander pal- 
 sied in the effort ! 
 
 Thanks — most hearty thanks — to the gentlemen of the Convention, who 
 gave us candidates like these at this important crisis. 
 
 The responsibility now rests with the people. See to it that every 
 RIGHTFUL VOTE IS DEPOSITED IN THE BALLoT-iiOX. Let every man 
 constitute himself a vigilance committee. Tlie loss of a ballot must not 
 be thought of. The jewels that sparkle in kingly diad«'ms will not com- 
 pare in value with the American freeman's ballot on the eighth of No- 
 vember next. 
 
 Do but your duty faitlifully, my suffering fellow-countrymen, and when 
 the morning of the ninth of November shall dav/n upon our beloved land, 
 the shouts of exultant joy, resounding through beautiful valleys, echoing 
 and re-echoing amidst mountain crags, reverberating through the corri- 
 dors of the Capitol and within the chambers of the Wliite mansion, 
 shall remind usurpers that the American people are still the sovereign 
 people, and the only Sovereign that can be pei'mitted to reign on the 
 sacred soil of America. 
 
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