Class JL4Ai 
 
 Book 
 
THE IDES OF MARCH; 
 
 OR, 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN, PRIVATE CITIZEN. 
 
 BEING A SEQUEL TO 
 
 THE END OF THE 
 
 
 
 IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT. 
 
 BY A 
 
 MERCHANT OF PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 KING & BAIRD. PRINTERS, No. 607 SANSOM STREI 
 
 1861. 
 
 
 - X=3 «» A <H 
 
.c.r 
 
TiHE IDES OF MARCH; 
 
 OR, 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN, PRIVATE CITIZEN. 
 
 BEINQ A SEQUEL TO 
 
 THE END OF THE 
 
 IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT. 
 
 BY A 
 
 MERCHANT OE PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 
 KING & BAIRD, PRINTERS, No. 607 SANSOM STREET. 
 
 1861. 
 
4-0 
 .J7? 
 
We read in "Dombey & Son," that when old Sol. Gills 
 had been absent a whole year, Captain Edward Cuttle, 
 Mariner, became so much perplexed, that he resorted for 
 advice to Captain Bunsby, with whom he had the fol- 
 lowing conversation : 
 
 "Bunsby," said the Captain, appealing to him solemnly, 
 " what do you make of this 1 There you sit, a man as 
 has had his head broke from infancy up'ards, and has got a 
 new opinion into it at every seam as has been opened. 
 Now what do you make o' this \" 
 
 "If so be," returned Bunsby, with unusual promptitude, 
 " as he's dead, my opinion is he won't come back no 
 more. If so be he's alive, my opinion is he will. Do I 
 say he will \ No. Why not \ Because the bearings of 
 this obserwation lays in the application on it." 
 
 " Bunsby !" said Captain Cuttle, who would seem to 
 have estimated the value of his distinguished friend's 
 opinions in proportion to the immensity of the difficulty 
 he experienced in making anything out of them ; 
 "Bunsby," said the Captain, quite confounded by admi- 
 ration, "you carry a weight of mind easy, as would 
 swamp one of my tonnage soon." 
 
 We read also, in the true story of the United States, 
 that on the 12th day of January, 1861, public expec- 
 tation in the Senate-chamber hung upon the lips of 
 William II. Seward, the acknowledged mouth-piece of 
 Abraham Lincoln, President elect ; and that those lips, 
 then and there, poured forth a stream of verbiage, com- 
 
monly called magnificent diction, which was of the breadth 
 of a newspaper column, and of the length of three-score 
 and ten, or perhaps, four-score inches, and which bore 
 on its bosom the following impenetrable mystery; 
 
 "If, therefore, Kansas were admitted as a State, under 
 the Wyandotte Constitution, as I think she ought to be, 
 and if the organic laws of all the other Territories should 
 be repealed, I could vote to authorize the organization 
 and admission of two new States which should include 
 them, reserving the right to effect subdivisions of them 
 whenever necessary, into several convenient States ; but 
 I do not find that such reservations could be constitu- 
 tionally made. Without them, the ulterior embarras- 
 ments which would result from the hasty incorporation 
 of States of such vast extent, and various interests and 
 character would outweigh all the immediate advantages 
 of such a measure. But if the measure were practicable, 
 I should prefer a different course — namely, when the 
 eccentric movements of secession and disunion shall 
 have ended, in whatever form that end may come, and 
 the angry excitements of the hour shall have subsided, 
 and calmness once more shall have resumed its accus- 
 tomed sway over the public mind, then, and not until 
 then — one, two, or three years hence — I should cheer- 
 fully advise a convention of the people, to be assembled 
 in pursuance of the Constitution, to consider and decide 
 whether any and what amendments of the organic 
 national law ought to be made." 
 
 Our first impression, on the perusal of this paragraph, 
 was that the great Itepublican had copied after a famous 
 Milesian story, in which a sovereign remedy for the 
 toothache is given, although the narrator chances to 
 have forgotten every ingredient of the remedy. But a 
 more critical examination enabled us to detect the 
 
working of the Bunsby mind in the man of Auburn ; 
 and we, therefore, hold it to be our duty to render the 
 passage into Bunsby diction ; as thus ; 
 
 "There might be two big States; and they might 
 afterwards be cut up into little States. Do I say there 
 should be 1 ? No. Why? Because it's against the Con- 
 stitution. The bearing of this observation lies in the appli- 
 cation of it. There might be a convention. Do I say there 
 should be 1 Yes, one, two, or three years hence. Avast then, 
 keep a bright look-out for'ard and good luck to you." 
 
 Now the Bunsby mind was always in Jack Bunsby, 
 as witness the following opinion antecedent by a whole 
 year to the one first quoted : 
 
 " Do I believe this here Son and Heir's gone down, my 
 lads'? Mayhap. Do I say so? Which'? If a skipper 
 stands out by Sen' George's Channel, making for the 
 Downs, what's right ahead of him \ The Goodwins. He 
 isn't forced to run upon the Goodwins, but he may. 
 The bearings of this obserwation lays in the application 
 on it. That a'nt no part of my duty. Awast then, keep 
 a bright look-out for'ard, and good luck to you." 
 
 But the versatile Senator from New York, was not at 
 all Bunsbyish when he said at Detroit, hardly four 
 months before the 12th of Jauuary: 
 
 " My humble advice, then, fellow citizens, is, that we 
 return and re-establish the original policy of the nation, 
 and henceforth hold, as we did in the beginning, that 
 slavery is and must be only a purely local, temporary, 
 and exceptional institution, confined within the slave 
 States where it already exists, while freedom is the 
 general, normal, enduring, and permanent condition of 
 society within the jurisdiction, and under the authority 
 of the Constitution of the United States." 
 
 And also : " Certainly, therefore, we have no need 
 
and no room for African slaves, in the Federal Terri- 
 tories." 
 
 No one could find mystery hidden in his language, 
 then, nor was its teaching obscure. Why, then, does he 
 now offer us only a choice between unconstitutional legis- 
 lation, on the part of a factious congress, and impossible 
 delay on the part of a suffering and excited people'? In 
 other words, why did he put on the Bunsby mind, on 
 that momentous 12th day of January'? 
 
 Grecian mythology is very instructive reading. There, 
 for example, is the story of Phaeton. We learn from 
 it, that a certain old Sol, in days long gone-by, required 
 considerable persuasion, before he was willing to hand 
 over his horses and chariot to that graceless young fellow, 
 who, in less than twenty-four hours, set the whole world 
 afire. The crafty boy was full of promises, until he had 
 cajoled the old gentleman out of the ribbons; but as 
 soon as he was on the box and had cracked his whip, 
 we read that 
 
 " The sun's perpendicular rays 
 Illumined the depths of the sea ; 
 The fishes, beginning to sweat, 
 Cried, hang it ! how hot we shall be." 
 
 Now, in Mr. Seward's view, a convention, in the pre- 
 sent excited state of the public mind, is out of the ques- 
 tion. This is one horn of the dilemma, which he tenders 
 in the name of conciliation. The other horn is uncon- 
 stitutional legislation, which may, in due season be 
 reviewed and pronounced void by United States Judges, 
 of Lincoln creation. Does not every one know that the 
 Supreme Court of the United States is principally com- 
 posed of men who can hardly expect to see another Pre- 
 sident inaugurated, after the term of Abraham Lincoln 1 
 
 Now, in our judgment, when William H. Seward 
 
enunciated his mystery of the 1 2th of January, he sought 
 
 to be one of those, 
 
 " That palter with us in a double sense ; 
 That keep the word of promise to our ear, 
 And break it to our hope." 
 
 It was the cry of peace, peace to the South, with the 
 intention of subjugating its people by subtilty in the end. 
 Or, to speak figuratively, it may be that, like Benhadad, 
 the Syrian, Mr. Seward had drank himself drunk, (new wine 
 of " cabinet brand" is very heady,) and, therefore, cried 
 out in magnificent diction, respecting the advancing forces 
 of the South ; " whether they be come out for peace, take* 
 them alive ; or whether they be come out for war, take 
 them alive." It is at least plain that he looked upon his 
 political adversaries as men whom it was easy to entrap ; 
 and it is equally plain that the " Benhadad platform" has 
 been soberly adopted by the good people of Michigan, 
 who have, within a few weeks, passed five resolutions, 
 calling upon the Administration to imprison all persons 
 sent to Washington as commissioners from the seceding 
 States, and to resume all the forts which the troops of the 
 seceding States have seized. 
 
 Since that time Mr. Seward has taken to informing 
 committees of working-men, and committees of mer- 
 chants, the Senate of the United States, and all other 
 parties concerned, that the negro question, the slavery- 
 extension-question is nothing, and that it never can be a 
 practical question, because there is on the average only 
 one slave to a territorial area equal to the surface of the 
 State of New York, but that the great question, and the 
 only question now is to save the Union. He would have 
 spoken much more candidly if he had said : " The only 
 question now is, how Mr. Lincoln and I are practically 
 to get into office." And is it possible, that this man, who 
 
8 
 
 a few months ago travelled from the Atlantic coast almost 
 to the verge of the Kocky Mountains, in order to set the 
 whole land in a state of uncontrollable frenzy as to the 
 negro- question, has now the sang-froid, the inconceivable 
 audacity, to assure us that that same negro-question is 
 nothing, after an"? We read that whilst Eome was burn- 
 ing Nero fiddled ; but at least he kept within his palace. 
 He did not go abroad and make a set speech, to assure 
 the good people that the fire was nothing, but that the 
 question was how to save the buildings of the Imperial 
 City. What is consuming the Union at this moment, but 
 the very fire which Mr. Seward and his coadjutors kindled] 
 
 " As a madman who casteth fire-brands, arrows, and 
 death, so is the man that deceiveth his neighbor and saith, 
 am not I in sport]" And again : " It is as sport to a fool to 
 do mischief; but a man of under standing hath wisdom." 
 And now, we ask, under the wisdom of Solomon, recorded 
 in the book of God, what confidence should the people 
 of these already disunited States have in the man, whose 
 large natural abilities, together with his great position as 
 Senator from the Empire State, have enabled him to con- 
 stitute Abraham Lincoln his own particular puppet, to 
 play the part of President from 1861 to 1865, under his 
 own auspicious Chief Secretaryship] 
 
 On that eventful 12th day of January, all hope of set- 
 tlement forsook the minds of the Senators and Repre- 
 sentatives of the Cotton-States. Who could not see that 
 the only alternative was to follow the lead of South Caro- 
 lina and secede, after Mr. Seward had thus stated the 
 foundation of the present crisis ] 
 
 " The occasion is the election of a President of the 
 United States, who is unacceptable to a portion of the 
 people. I state the case accurately. There was no move- 
 ment of disunion before the ballots which expressed that 
 
choice were cast. Disunion began as soon as the result 
 was announced." 
 
 Such, according to Mr. Seward's accurate statement of 
 the case, being the real, though trivial cause of our pre- 
 sent serious difficulties, he proceeds to summarise certain 
 ostensible grounds on which, (he says) Southern disunion- 
 ists have sought to place their platform ; as thus: 
 
 "The Disunionists, consciously unable to stand on 
 their mere disappointment in the recent election, have 
 attempted to enlarge their ground. More than thirty 
 years there has existed a considerable— though not hereto- 
 fore a formidable — mass of citizens in certain States situ- 
 ate near or around the delta of the Mississippi, who 
 believe that the Union is less conducive to the welfare 
 and greatness of those States than a smaller Confederacy, 
 embracing only slave States, would be. This class has 
 availed itself of the discontents resulting from the elec- 
 tion, to put into operation the machinery of dissolution 
 long ago prepared and waiting only for occasion. In other 
 States there is a soreness because of the want of sympa- 
 thy in the free States, with the efforts of slaveholders for 
 the recapture of fugitives from service. In all the slave 
 States there is a restiveness resulting from the resistance 
 which has been so determinedly made within the last few 
 years, in the free States, to the extension of slavery in the 
 common territories of the United States." 
 
 We pause here for a moment to remark that most men 
 of sound mind hereabouts, think that Mr. Seward's state- 
 ment of alleged Southern grievances, is open to the small 
 objection of putting the last first, and the first last, and 
 calling the least greatest, and the greatest least ; and then 
 we inquire, with all due respect, who is this Abraham, 
 this new father of the faithful, that the Southern people of 
 these United States should so greatly disquiet themselves 
 
10 
 
 about his accession to $25,000 per annum, a home in the 
 White House, and the official patronage which may lend 
 him consequence as an individual, or enrich his political 
 associates during four years to come ] Does it seem likely 
 that many men of character and property, and many 
 States of great wealth, would rush into revolutionary acts, 
 and a provisional government, with all contingent hazards 
 of civil war, as a possible and only too probable conse- 
 quence, simply to frustrate Abraham, the quondam rail- 
 splitter in the field, the present hair-splitter on the stump, 
 in his expected treasures of office 1 It is an insult to 
 the understanding of a child to " state the case accu- 
 rately" in the Seward line of argument. If that be ac- 
 curacy, most men would rather have such inaccurate 
 statements as the following: 
 
 The presidential election of the year 1860 was consti- 
 tutional inform, but sectional and therefore revolutionary in 
 spirit. During the excited canvass between Mr. Lincoln 
 and his opponents, ominous threats of Southern secession 
 as a contemplated counterpart to Northern denial of the 
 rights of slave-holders, were daily heard by every one, Mr. 
 Seward not excepted. But he, and other partizan leaders, 
 chose to be incredulous, and to assure the Northern peo- 
 ple of the United States that the wolf, called disunion, 
 was not coming out of South Carolina, nor out of any 
 other State. That wolf, however, did come before last 
 Christmas day ; but " who's afraid %" said the eminent 
 Republican. Then came the platitudes and the mystery 
 of a "magnificent diction" speech, on the 12th of January ; 
 and thereafter went on secession until, in the language of 
 a few plain lines in that speech, the question of the right 
 of secession has given " place to the more practical one, 
 whether many seceding States have a right to coerce the 
 remaining members to acquiesce in a dissolution." 
 
11 
 
 And indeed the matter has already gone much further 
 than what Mr. Seward calls the more practical question ; 
 for thinking men in the Middle States are already con- 
 templating as an inevitable future the perfect virtual dis- 
 integration of these United States, on the fourth day of 
 March, 1861 ; and their desire is to see how that which 
 will then have become the baseless fabric of a vision can 
 be reconstructed and restored. 
 
 The writer speaks by the authority of common sense, 
 for his own Commonwealth, the State of Pennsylvania, 
 which contains three millions of people, (almost as large 
 a population as that of the entire United States in 1776,) 
 which has bread enough and to spare, which furnishes, 
 for peace or for war, as the case may be, nearly all the 
 coal of the sea-board, which has vast manufacturing re- 
 sources, and which needs only abundant and good markets 
 for the products of her industry. Can any one, does any 
 one suppose, that the Republican party will have all these 
 resources on any terms whatever, to hurl in the name of 
 Abraham the Honest, or Hannibal the Great, or William 
 the Conqueror, in an irrepressible conflict, and in the 
 name of coercion, or in any other name, against the 
 South'? Can we not live within ourselves, combining ease 
 and dignity in happy proportion, whilst we assure the 
 Republican leaders that our people are not prepared to 
 acknowledge that nineteen thirty-fourths of the United 
 States are the United States, nor that any other fractional 
 part is the whole] Can we not consider inauguration a 
 harmless pageantry, an inexplicable dumb show, in which 
 without the accompanying terrors of Governor Houston's 
 dead body, an Ex-United States Chief Justice, with an 
 air of great solemnity, swears into imaginary office, a 
 gentleman whose programme for his first appearance on 
 a very large theatre, is to illustrate the resemblance be- 
 
12 
 
 tween the map of the United States and Daguerre's dis- 
 solving views of scenery \ Is not this coolness of incon- 
 sistency on our part, or shameless perfidy to Mr. Lincoln, 
 or whatever else any one pleases to call it, vastly letter 
 than civil war, especially when we know that we shall be 
 the border State for that war, the place of obvious offence 
 to the whole South, because the place of resort for fugitive 
 negroes, the chief point of export of coal, and, therefore, 
 the point to be secured above all others by belligerents ? Does 
 any one suppose that we are going to be oblivious of 
 these considerations, on the fourth of March 1 Does any 
 one suppose that we are going to join in the chorus of 
 " the Constitution, the Union, the enforcement of the 
 laws," which, being interpreted, means coercion, or at least 
 war by a Northern confederacy against a Southern con- 
 federacy \ Not at all. We are under no such delusion 
 about popular cries as that which Sidney Smith satirized 
 so pleasantly, when he said to the Irish some such words 
 as these: " Of what use is it for an Irishman to split his 
 throat with crying Erin-go-bragh ! Better cry, Erin go 
 bread and butter, Erin go shoes and stockings ; Erin go 
 clothes without holes in them." We can say for ourselves, 
 without the help of any satirist, that the Constitution 
 was violated by a sectional election, that the Union has 
 since been rent asunder, and that we have no fondness for 
 " enforcement of the laws." which means a free fight by 
 our hands, and on our soil, whilst Michigan and Massa- 
 chusetts, being at equally safe distances from the field of 
 conflict, exhort us " to be strong, and quit ourselves like 
 men." 
 
 All the above reasoning assumes that the Border 
 Slave States will make common cause with the Cotton 
 States. How can it be otherwise 1 What in plain terms 
 are Border Slave States'? Obviously they are States 
 
13 
 
 which look to discontinuance of slavery in a future, not 
 very remote. They have in capability and not in de- 
 velopment, interests to which the existence of slavery is 
 adverse; mining, manufacturing and farming resources, 
 which are greatly depressed by the paralyzing influence of 
 slave-labor on every sort of work which the slave is not 
 competent to perform. These undeveloped resources hold 
 out a prospect of greater prosperity in the near future, 
 without slavery, than is now enjoyed by such Border 
 States with slavery. They, therefore, wish to sell their 
 slaves at the earliest convenient day, just as New Hamp- 
 shire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jer- 
 sey and Pennsylvania eighty years ago were desirous of 
 selling their slaves. And the States which we have last 
 named, or rather their individual citizens, did sell their 
 slaves, and did by such process of sale, send them into the 
 present Border Slave-States, which in due time relieved 
 themselves in part, and which hereafter must fully relieve 
 themselves of slavery by selling them to the great Cotton 
 and Sugar States, which we already have, and to those 
 Cotton and Sugar States which we may hereafter form 
 in any present or future territory of the United States. 
 But if the existing Cotton and Sugar States are to en- 
 deavor to stand by themselves, and without the full co- 
 operation and cordial assistance of the Border Slave States, 
 it is plain enough that the early weakness and imme- 
 diate difficulties of such an exclusively Cotton and Sugar 
 Confederation will be so great as to indispose their white 
 population to add to the natural increase of their present 
 number of slaves; and such in fact as to incapacitate 
 that white population for some time to come from making 
 further purchases of negroes from the Border States. To 
 whom then will the owners of slaves in the Border States 
 be able to make sales, although they may be under the 
 
14 
 
 strong stimulus of a natural and proper desire to attain 
 to such prosperity, as free farming, manufacturing and 
 mining States have X Is it not plain enough that the 
 dissociation of the Border States from the Cotton States 
 would deprive the former of their only market for slaves, 
 and the latter of the firm basis on which it might and 
 would be safe or profitable to increase the number of their 
 slaves by purchase from the Border States 1 Theoretical 
 gentlemen may spin contrary theories, but mercantile life 
 generally impresses upon a man's mind the conviction that 
 he who has an article, which he earnestly desires to sell, 
 is very apt to be found in close association and fellowship 
 with the man that chances to be the only possible person 
 that can ivant to buy the article in question. 
 
 Therefore, we say, that the control of the terms on which 
 Republican pretensions as to the repression of African 
 slavery in the United States shall be quashed, does not 
 rest with the Border States. Their natural position makes 
 them anxious sellers ; but they will not be able to sell at 
 all, or at least for many years to come, unless they agree 
 to terms on which Cotton and Sugar States can afford 
 to be prompt and eager buyers. Those terms have 
 already been defined with the most striking clearness and 
 simplicity. The definition will be found in sundry acts 
 of secession, adopted on the Anti-Repul>lican ground that 
 the Constitution of the United States carries slavery into 
 all the territory or common property of the Union. 
 Verbal definitions may be obscure, or open to varieties of 
 construction, but when a certain interpretation of any 
 instrument is supported by the public acts of States, 
 ready, if need be, to maintain by force their own inter- 
 pretation of that instrument, all chance of two conflicting 
 interpretations, or of any verbal dispute in the future, 
 has certainly disappeared from the limits of the incipient 
 
15 
 
 Confederacy, which has interpreted conclusively for itself 
 by such acts of secession. This is the great advantage 
 which actions have over simple speech. Every one may 
 remember that at the outset of the French Kevolution it 
 was a favorite point with the crowned heads of Europe 
 to deny the existence of the French Republic. A few 
 years later Napoleon, a very young man and only, as yet, 
 General Bonaparte, flailed the Austrians in Italy at such 
 an unmerciful rate, that he drove them, in a few months, 
 into the treaty of Campo Formio. A protocol was 
 drafted by some Austrian of the red-tape school and 
 submitted to the conqueror at Leoben. Its first article 
 acknowledged the existence of the French Republic. 
 " Strike that out," said Napoleon, to the scribe, when 
 he began to read his verbiage; "you might as well 
 say that the sun shines." For a somewhat similar reason 
 neither Crittenden propositions, nor Border State resolu- 
 tions, nor Kellogg propositions, nor any other form of 
 words will be needed by the new Confederacy, which is 
 to have its nucleus in the existing Cotton States. These 
 things would have done very well in their day, only a 
 few weeks ago ; but revolutions do not go backward. Of 
 any new form of speech, whatever, we must now say, " It 
 is too late." We all remember the crushing effect of that 
 laconic reply by which some one, without even rising from 
 his place in the French chamber, quietly put aside in the 
 afternoon Louis Philippe's proposal for a regency in favor 
 of his grandson. The very same Assembly had in vain 
 solicited from him in the morning the very same propo- 
 sition. 
 
 Thus it is plain that the Border States must coalesce 
 with the Cotton States. It is also equally plain' that the 
 Cotton States cannot require from the Border States a 
 pledge that these last will always remain Slave States. 
 
16 
 
 He who forms new connexions in business, in order to 
 sell a portion of his property to advantage, will certainly 
 not give a pledge to keep to the end of time the very 
 property which he so earnestly desires to sell. Therefore 
 pro-slavery enthusiasts need not indulge the delusion that 
 slavery is to emigrate further South and West, and yet 
 to remain in full force where it now is, to the North and 
 East of the Cotton States. And if Border States, which 
 are soon to be Free States, are desirable additions to the 
 proposed Cotton and Sugar Confederation, much more 
 are those Free States, which view the slavery question 
 without fanaticism, desirable as immediate additions to 
 the combined fifteen Slave States. 
 
 We turn now to the study of geography " Put up the 
 map of Europe!" said Mr. Pitt, when a great war, in- 
 volving, as he supposed, great changes of the boundaries 
 of empires, had broken out on the continent. " It will 
 be time enough," he added, "to open it thirty years 
 hence." That war went on for almost the life time of a 
 generation. There was great desolation, immense suffer- 
 ing, but, in the end, no material change of the limits of 
 any of the bleeding, fever-stricken, bankrupt, exhausted 
 empires of the old world. Therefore, fellow-citizens of 
 Pennsylvania and of the United States (we cannot call 
 our country by any other name), let us, as yet in blessed 
 peace, open and attentively consider the map of the 
 United States. We instinctively fasten our eyes on two 
 points, which were shining marks for our British brethren 
 during the war of 1812. The one is Washington — the 
 other New Orleans. We stretch a compass from Wash- 
 ington to the point where the waters of Lake Erie form 
 the shore of the State of Pennsylvania. Our sweep from 
 Erie, towards the right hand, or East, strikes the Hudson 
 river at the town of Hudson, intermediate between Catts- 
 
17 
 
 kill and Albany, avoids the State line of Massachusetts, 
 and comprises about one-half of the State of Connecti- 
 cut, striking the coast of the sound half way between 
 New Haven and New London. Our southern sweep 
 from Erie takes in the eastern flank of Ohio, nearly all 
 Virginia, and nearly all North Carolina, striking the city 
 of Wilmington, and almost touching the boundary of 
 South Carolina. More than half of the populations of 
 New York and Connecticut,- all of New Jersey, Pennsyl- 
 vania, Delaware and Maryland, nearly all Virginia and 
 and North Carolina, and a densely populous portion of 
 Ohio, to say nothing of the District of Columbia, lie 
 within that segment of a circle which we have described 
 with our compasses. At a rough guess, we may fairly 
 say that one-third of the population of the whole United 
 States may be found within the limits which we have 
 indicated ; and we may add, that not one man, woman, 
 or child, in forty, with fanatical views, pro or con, in 
 respect to slavery, can be found within those limits. 
 Moreover, the whole of these ten millions of people are 
 inextricably connected with and dependent upon each 
 other, by reason of ties of family and business, by rail- 
 road communication, mercantile credits, and the supply and 
 demand of commodities. The circular line, which we 
 have drawn, represents an endless chain, freighted with 
 comforts and conveniences, and revolving inwards from 
 Long Island Sound to Cape Fear. Now why should all 
 of us, crowded, as we are, into what is really a pretty 
 narrow space for this Western Hemisphere of magnifi- 
 cent dimensions — why should we adventure life, and 
 limb, and property, and peace of conscience, and true 
 religion, and every thing else on an absurd, fanatical 
 question about the further extension of African slavery? 
 jEvery one will admit that the blacks must multiply some- 
 
18 
 
 where. On that point every race has a bill of rights 
 anterior to the Flood, and going back even to Paradise ; 
 and we must, in candor, admit that the African race has 
 always availed itself of its rights, and has never fallen 
 short of its duty in the premises. Then, if they must 
 increase, they must have more room. If any one wishes 
 to free them, and put them, as tropical plants, on an 
 equality with indigenous whites, let him devote his pri- 
 vate fortune to the purchase ; and if he has any reward, 
 it will certainly be " after this present life ended." But 
 if no one has money of his own to spare in this wise, let 
 us not withhold from the humble toil of the cotton- 
 picking African that national domain, which is now 
 partly a barren desert and partly a wilderness of prairie 
 or of forest. Let us not talk fanatically about the pollu- 
 tion of virgin soil by the foot of the overseer. That virgin 
 soil, about which politicians declaim with affected fervor, 
 is, in the estimation of common sense, nothing but " the 
 wilderness and the solitary place," which would be glad 
 of any population whatever. Let us, therefore, cease 
 from such ranting ; and let us, in lieu thereof, entreat Al- 
 mighty God that our populous cities be not blackened by 
 the smoke of battle, nor our fertile fields trampled, in 
 our day, by the feet of opposing armies, and fattened for 
 our children by the blood of men, who died in the very 
 act of fratricide. 
 
 And now we place one point of our compasses at New 
 Orleans, and we extend the instrument until we find that 
 the most north-eastern point of South Carolina and the 
 most north-eastern point of Missouri are equi-distant 
 from that city. The segment of a circle, which we now 
 describe, comprises the seven States which have seceded. 
 It also embraces Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, the city 
 of Cincinnati, in Ohio, and those portions of the States 
 
19 
 
 of Indiana and Illinois which have their natural outlets 
 by the mouth of the Mississippi. In our enumeration of 
 contents, we should not omit the western portion of North 
 Carolina, a small fragment of Virginia, a slice of bleed- 
 ing Kansas, with Lecompton written upon it, and the 
 whole of the Indian Territory. Here, again, in a seg- 
 ment of a circle, we find about ten millions of people, 
 who must have close relations with each other, and must 
 constitute another endless chain, composed of links of 
 family and ties of business, so long as cotton has a mar- 
 ket for cash, and even so long as the rivers of our West 
 shall run towards the father of waters, and the father of 
 waters himself shall wander listlessly and lazily toward 
 the Gulf. Indeed, we may say that until negroes shall 
 have ceased to pick cotton, and eat corn and hogs, there 
 cannot be any great hostility between the men of Cincin- 
 nati and the men of New Orleans. Their disputes will 
 limit themselves to points concerning bags and bales, or 
 concerning barrels and hogsheads. The extension or 
 non-extension of slavery is a question with which rich 
 districts, needing a good near market, as well as an out- 
 let by the Mississippi, cannot afford, and will not under 
 take seriously, or, at least, permanently, to intermeddle. 
 Now, what portion of the United States is outside of 
 our two segments of circles ] California and Oregon of 
 course. They will give their adhesion and their wealth 
 to the highest bidder ; and we, therefore, conclude that 
 if our two several segments of circles are harmonious, 
 each within itself, and mutually towards each other, 
 there will be no strong attraction to draw the wealth of 
 the Pacific from the "Reformed" United States. 
 
 As for Utah, be it far from us to claim it as an honor- 
 able appendage ! NewTMexico and Washington Terri- 
 tories are very magnificent, without doubt, in the way of 
 
20 
 
 mountains ; but they have not much population to enjoy 
 the prospect. We confess, also, that we shiver at the 
 thought of Pike's Peak, the Black Hills, and the Devil's 
 Lake, which, respectively, lend their charms to the western 
 part of Kansas, to Nebraska, and to Dacotah. We feel as if 
 we had gotten back to the resorts of man, when we look 
 at Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, aiid Michigan. These 
 are, we confess, incendiary States. It is necessary to 
 warm up one's blood, at times, when a man resides in 
 such high latitudes. They are, therefore, particularly 
 warlike at this time, and, perhaps, also, in part, on John 
 Randolph's famous principle of increasing one's words of 
 defiance in proportion to the square of the distance of 
 one's antagonist. 
 
 And now what shall we say of those large portions of 
 Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, which have a lake shore inte- 
 rest \ What of Northern and Western New York, which 
 has its shores upon Lake Erie and upon Lake' Ontario'? 
 What of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachu- 
 setts, Rhode Island, and Eastern Connecticut 1 In re- 
 spect to Rhode Island and Eastern Connecticut, it is easy 
 to show that their dominant interests lie with those Mid- 
 dle and Southern Atlantic States, which are embraced in 
 our first-described segment. The traffic between New 
 London and Providence, on the one hand, and New York 
 on the other, maintains a railroad and several lines of 
 steamboats, in competition with each other. Goods go 
 mainly South from Connecticut and Rhode Island, to 
 the great Metropolis, or to Philadelphia, for sale. Maine, 
 New Hampshire, and Massachusetts produce quite enough 
 for the solid men of Boston to stand up under. The 
 question, the practical question, the only question for 
 these three last-named States, for Vermont, for Western 
 New York, for Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, for 
 
21 
 
 Northern Ohio, Northern Indiana, Northern Illinois, in 
 a word, for about one-fourth of the people of the United 
 States, is simply this: Has your virtue, on the point of 
 slavery gone so far ahead of that of your Revolutionary 
 forefathers, and our Revolutionary forefathers, that you 
 must go off, or, if the word must come out, secede from 
 the rest of the Union, and form some sort of new con- 
 federation, either amongst yourselves, or with your Lake 
 and St. Lawrence River neighbor, Canada, together with 
 the other British Provinces 1 
 
 Now you will admit, that by yourselves, as a 
 confederacy of seven or eight millions of people, with 
 plenty of sea-coast, and of manufactured goods, on the 
 one side, and plenty of lake-shore and breads tuffs on the 
 other very distant side, you would have quite a chilly and 
 uncomfortable time of it. We, therefore, consider at 
 once the probabilities of your coalition with Canada and 
 the British Provinces. 
 
 You may be assured that you cannot have any coalition 
 with those British possessions, unless you can first per- 
 suade their people to declare themselves absolved from 
 allegiance to Great Britain. "Verdant Greens" do not 
 abound in the British Parliament, to such an alarming 
 extent, as to make the public mind of the United King- 
 dom credulous on the subject of the fondness of the sons 
 of the Pilgrim Fathers for hereditary royalty and control 
 by a mother country. There are men now living in the 
 realm of Queen Victoria, who remember that the first 
 trouble of her reign was with the Canadas ; and who 
 remember also the burning of the steamboat Caroline, 
 and the presence of General Scott on the frontier to 
 repress interference by the lake-shore population of the 
 United States. In those days the Canadas were expen- 
 sive and unimportant possessions of the British crown. 
 
22 
 
 Now the dominions of Great Britain on this continent, 
 are no longer burdens on her finances, whilst on the 
 other hand, certain quite supposable eventualities might 
 make them for a time of the highest possible importance 
 to her. Suppose that France and Russia should coalesce 
 for her invasion, aad actually accomplish that direful 
 work, who can over-estimate the importance of British 
 North America to Great Britain and Ireland in such an 
 emergency 1 Where else in all her foreign possessions, 
 could she build fleets and equip armies to fly on the 
 wings of the wind, or rather with the panting haste of 
 the steam-ship to the rescue of English hearts and 
 English homes 1 
 
 We, therefore, think that you will not obtain the 
 sanction of Great Britain for any sort of coalition with 
 Canada. We feel equally sure that Canada and the 
 other British Provinces will not revolt from an easy, 
 absent sovereign and pass into a new confederation, in 
 which you would certainly have the upper hand, and 
 which from the very conditions of its birth, would have 
 to be an ambidexter combatant against Great Britain, 
 and the United States. Moreover, we cannot spare you. 
 We love you as brethren. We love Northern fire-eaters 
 just as we love Southern fire-eaters; and besides we 
 should be shorn of a large part of our glory, if the lakes 
 on which w T e won our naval victories, together with 
 Lexington and Bunker Hill, and even Liverpool wharf 
 were outside of our borders. Come then with us and we 
 will do you good. 
 
 "But slavery!" you exclaim. "We cannot abide it. 
 It is an accursed thing !" Very well, we will not argue 
 the point; suppose it is an accursed thing. Do you 
 mean to commit political suicide, in order to get rid of 
 if? We ourselves consider human depravity an accursed 
 
23 
 
 thing. "We should like to get rid of it ; but we have 
 never for a moment thought of laying murderous hands 
 on our own person, in order to accomplish that moral 
 good, which we greatly prefer to the evil that is in us. 
 Neither have we acquaintance with, or knowledge of any 
 persons who entertain violent views against continuance 
 in this depraved condition of terrestrial existence to 
 which we have all been appointed. We find on the 
 contrary, that men who heartily abhor their evil inclin- 
 ations not only tolerate with calmness their present 
 existence, but even rejoice in the birth of the children 
 whom God graciously gives them. And yet on certain 
 principles, called philanthropic and philosophic, the birth 
 of a child is the extension of an accursed thing, to wit : 
 of human depravity. 
 
 We, however, think that even anti-slavery philan- 
 thropists and philosophers would readily and warmly 
 answer any apparent angel of light, who should come 
 from Jupiter or from some other first-class planet, to 
 demonstrate to us terrestrials the propriety of suicide, or 
 at least of the perpetual prohibition of marriage on this 
 sin-defiled sphere of insignificant dimensions. And we 
 also think that every citizen of these United States should 
 be able to laugh to scorn the senseless clamor of all 
 the humanitarians of Europe as to African slavery, 
 which is an institution that we got against our will, and 
 which cleaves to us as part of our national life. And 
 yet how vastly preferable is that national life of ours to 
 the life of any other people on God's earth ! 
 
 In our preceding speculations as to the course of things 
 under the approaching disintegration and reconstruction 
 of these United States, we have freely assumed that if 
 we fail to reconstruct, there must be division of States. 
 Let no one forget that the internal harmony, the very 
 
24 
 
 unity heretofore enjoyed by each and every State has 
 grown out of that majestic Union, in which we are 
 represented by States, and not by independent counties, 
 nor by districts of the East and districts of the West, 
 nor by river-sections, and lake-sections, nor in fine in 
 any other way than as Commonwealths. So will it not 
 be in the evil day when a Northern Confederacy and a 
 Southern Confederacy shall have raised their heads in 
 antagonism to each other. Divisions and subdivisions, 
 in sickening detail, will press upon our attention, con- 
 sume our resources and exhaust our hopes. So will it 
 be north, so will it be south of Mason and Dixon's line. 
 
 What then is our obvious, our only refuge from these 
 frightful evils ? It is simply to hold ourselves free for 
 passage on or immediately after the 4th March, 1861, 
 into or under some provisional government, looking to a 
 reconstruction of the United States, on the original prin- 
 ciple of that union in respect to slavery. That principle 
 needs no explanation, or verbal statement. It has as we 
 have already said, been expounded by secession. To the 
 seven States, which have already gone out of the Union, 
 will soon be added the other Slave States. The repudi- 
 ation of Mr. Lincoln, by Pennsylvania, will turn the 
 scale against him and therefore against civil toar. New 
 Jersey and the city of New York will speedily declare 
 themselves in the same sense; and then time and patience, 
 under the blessing of Heaven, will do the needful work 
 of reconstruction, provided we have any capacity for 
 that sort of virtue and common sense, which held our 
 forefathers together by what some men called a rope of 
 straw, during all the dangers and the weakness of our 
 country from 1776 to 1789. 
 
 And now we proceed * to consider a point, which' 
 
25 
 
 without doubt has suggested itself to every one's mind 
 more than once in the midst of the preceding pages. 
 That point is the very question which some one puts 
 every day to some other person, in words such as these : 
 " How shall we ever be able again to say that we have 
 a general government, a government of the United States, 
 respectable in the eyes of Europe and Asia, or even in 
 the eyes of Africa; a government able to protect us in 
 the enjoyment of our property and rights, whether as 
 amongst ourselves, or towards foreign powers'? If" 
 continues the objector, "States may secede whenever 
 they choose, and the whole confederation must then dis- 
 integrate and take all the hazards of reconstruction, we 
 shall at all times live under such uncertainties that an 
 exchange of our very free and easy institutions for the 
 firm bonds of monarchical government would appear to 
 be desirable. We must strengthen the general govern- 
 ment, or else even reconstruction will do us no good," 
 says our honest but mistaken reasoner, in conclusion. 
 
 The reasoner, whose language we have just supposed, 
 represents a very large proportion of the population of 
 all the States which have not already gone out of the 
 Union. His reasoning is mistaken, because he has not 
 read aright the history of the Old World generally and 
 of Modern Europe particularly. That history is emphati- 
 cally the history of strong governments ; and what, we 
 ask, have been the consequences and results to the mass 
 of those same strong governments, of which our reasoner 
 is so much enamored. Let him, especially, consider 
 Europe during the three centuries which have elapsed since 
 Monarchy, more or less limited, became highly exalted 
 upon the crumbled ruins of the feudal system, and we 
 will easily show him that the history of Europe, during 
 the ten generations of those three hundred years, is 
 
26 
 
 nothing but a history of wars, waged without any other 
 real end or object, than the pleasure of the persons who 
 chanced to occupy the chief places of strong govern- 
 ments. It is war and more war, blood and more blood, 
 until blood and treasure being exhausted, peace becomes 
 a sorry necessity of sovereign princes. It is war on ac- 
 count of religion, or war to maintain the balance of 
 power. It is "seven years' war;" it is "thirty years' 
 war;" it is a " war of the Spanish succession," or "wars 
 of the French Revolution," or a " Russian war," or an 
 " Italian campaign." But whatever be the name of the 
 war, the deceased or living statesmen of the strong gov- 
 ernments which waged it are the only persons that have 
 been able to see its end or uses. The people fight; 
 they perish by pestilence, by famine, or the sword — it 
 matters little in what way they perish ; — they lie in the 
 grave like sheep appointed to be slain ; or, worse than 
 that, they die with murderous weapons in their hands, 
 and those weapons are crimson with blood, shed, they 
 know not why. It is pitiable to read the life and death 
 of such a man as Headly Vickars, a man of faith, and 
 charity, and prayer, who rose from holy meditation to 
 hew down Russians, and who fell himself in a war for 
 which his writings make no better excuse than an alleged 
 general duty of Great Britain to police the Continent of 
 Europe, in order to keep all its sovereigns within due 
 bounds. It would, however, have been strange indeed if 
 he had been able to produce justification for hostilities, 
 into which the British Ministers themselves admitted 
 that their country had drifted, they hardly knew how. 
 
 Now it may be a blessed thing for millions of people 
 to be thus at the mercy of a few men who wield cen- 
 tralized power, or a strong government ; but our prefer- 
 ence, (we say it candidly,) is for a government which shall 
 
27 
 
 always be weak, except for defence. Does any one imagine 
 that the United States, when reconstructed in the man- 
 ner hereinbefore proposed, can ever be weak for defence ? 
 "Would not an attack of any foreign power upon our 
 rights bind us together as one man 1 And what more, in 
 the way of strength, do we ask or want % Is it strength 
 for unnecessary or wilfully protracted wars with foreign 
 powers'? The Hartford Convention should have taught 
 us, nearly half a century ago, that we can never have 
 such strength ! Is it strength for sectional oppression, or 
 factious internal policy'? The Southern Conventions of 
 this memorable winter have disabused every rational 
 mind of the supposition that sectional might can, under 
 the forms of our government, ever prevail over opposing 
 sectional right. "We may, therefore, devoutly thank God 
 that we live under a government which cannot venture 
 upon experiments outside of the good of the governed. 
 
 Our idea may seem too new to be good ; but let no 
 one condemn it without first bestowing some additional 
 thoughts on the history of Modern Europe and on the 
 present condition of that Continent. Perhaps he will 
 ultimately conclude that European philanthropy might 
 be turned to good account if it abstained from interfer- 
 ence with African slavery in the United States and 
 directed its efforts to the abatement of " gunpowder 
 slavery," or standing armies in Europe. Our brethren 
 of the Old World deem the innocent and productive en- 
 forced toil of the poor African a hardship beyond endu- 
 rance, an outrage upon the common justice of an age of 
 progress; but they have no words of condemnation 
 against conscription, enlistment, impressment, or any 
 other pleasant device for enslaving a poor fellow for mili- 
 tary glory, which yields, as the price of killing and being 
 killed in an unintelligible quarrel, certain magnificent 
 
28 
 
 allowances, to wit, clothing, rations, and a few cents per 
 diem for tobacco and amusement. 
 
 Returning to our own country, from whose affairs we 
 have somewhat digressed, we wish to add that no one 
 need apprehend that the dangerous experiment of seces- 
 sion, disintegration and reconstruction, will be repeated 
 for amusement, within the natural period of his own life- 
 time. The process of which we speak cannot pass 
 through its several stages without involving every State 
 of the Union, and every true-hearted citizen of every 
 State, in anxiety and suffering mote or less acute. 
 Neither we, nor the children who now sit around our 
 tables, will probably ever forget the discouraging way 
 upon which we have just entered. 
 
 We wish also to remark that such nullification of Mr. 
 Lincoln's election as seems necessary for the public good 
 at this time, is virtually an irregular and extreme appli- 
 tion of a process which is quite familiar to Englishmen 
 and which, to their minds, is not only quite legitimate, 
 but absolutely a most essential — perhaps we might say 
 the most essential — part of their free institutions. We 
 refer to the dissolution of Parliament, whensoever the repre- 
 sentation of the popular mind by that body has become 
 a doubtful point. The chief use, and indeed almost the 
 only real prerogative of sovereign power in Great Britain 
 is to send back to the people the men who have proposed 
 measures which threaten the peace of the country. The 
 Crown may, indeed, as every one is aware, simply with- 
 hold assent from dangerous legislation ; but that is quite 
 obsolete practice. The usage of the present century is 
 to dissolve any Parliament which tends to destruction, 
 rather than to edification. Secession, with its natural 
 influences on the public mind, will do for Mr. Lincoln 
 
29 
 
 and his Congress, in an irregular way, what Queen Vic- 
 toria has done more than once, very pleasantly and quite 
 regularly, for the Commons' Parliament within a quarter 
 of a century. 
 
 And now we cannot close without calling the attention 
 of our readers to the singular, the frightful disturbance 
 of the whole civilized world at this time, in the name of 
 liberty and civilization. On the third of March millions 
 of Russian serfs will be emancipated. The Emperor has 
 so ordered ; the nobility will obey, and the mass, unedu- 
 cated as it is for such a change, may at once pass 
 beyond the control of Emperor, nobility, and all others 
 in authority. When the British Light Brigade made 
 at Balaklava its memorable charge, a French officer 
 looked on and cooly remarked : " That is very magnifi- 
 cent, but it is not war." We greatly fear that the results 
 of precipitate emancipation in Russia may be such as to 
 justify some one in saying shortly; " that is very magnifi- 
 cent, but it is not civilization." 
 
 And then all Europe is at this moment standing under 
 arms in expectation of a bloody conflict which is ex- 
 pected to sweep over Italy, always of course in the name 
 of liberty and civilization, about the opening of the Mar- 
 tial month. And last, but not least, on or about the 
 fourth of March, the people of these Middle States, in 
 general, and of Pennsylvania, in particular, must choose 
 for themselves, between peaceful disintegration in the hope 
 of reconstruction on the one hand, and Abraham Lincoln 
 with civil war, as a humane abatement of African slavery, 
 on the other. 
 
 Philadelphia, Feb. 12, 1861. 
 

 LB S '12