YALE
UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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INTERIOR

CAUSES OF THE WAR :

THE NATION DEMONIZED,

I ITS PRESIDENT A SPIRIT-RAPPER.

A CITIZEN OP OHIO.

'There's nane ever feared that the truth should be heard,
But they witam the truth would indict." — Burns.

PUBLISHED AND SOLD BY

j M. DOOLADY, AGENT, NO. 49 WALKER STREET, N. Y.

sag

1863.

~<e3ft:

INTERIOR

CAUSES OF THE WAR :

THE NATION DEMONIZED,

AND

ITS PRESIDENT A SPIRIT-RAPPER.

A CITIZEN OF OHIO.

'There's nane ever feared that the truth should be heard,
But they wham the truth would iin>iOT."-^i?wn!«.

PUBLISHED AND SOLD BY
M. DOOLADY, AGENT, NO. 49 WALKER STREET, N. Y.
1863.

Entered, according to act of Congress, in the year 1863, by
M. DOOLADY,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern
District of New York.

INTERIOR CAUSES OF THE WAR.

CHAPTER I

Causes Naturac and Supernatural — Spirit Rappings — Spiritualists Sur
round the President^His Adyisers — Higher Law — Nation Mad.
Nature is that which is created, and as it could not
have created itself, it is of necessity the effect of some
prior cause. But nature, once in action, becomes the
cause of other effects ; so that we speak of natural causes
— the effect which one effect has in the production of
another. Many such causes, no doubt, operate in the
production of all wars. But then, underlying nature,
are influences which operate on the human mind, .and
which at times upheave society, as internal fires upheave
the crusted earth. These influences are indiscriminately
called spiritual, supernatural, or interior. They do
not, ordinarily at least, change natures laws, but then,
by exciting one disposition of the human mind, and sup
pressing another, they dispose men for the execution of
particular objects. In this way men are bewildered,
thrown into wars, and so made each others executioners.
The ancient Greeks and Romans not only understood
these effects, but had a tolerably clear conception of
their causes ; so much so, that they have given us a
proverb through which we may derive some rays of an
cient light. They say that, "Whom the gods wish to
destroy they first make mad."

4 Mysterious Phenomena.
This is far from being either a vain or vulgar idea-,
although it may be excessive in dignifying all spirits as
Grods. But however it may be in this particular, in
others it displays a knowledge which the world seems,
for a time, to have lost. Homer's gods, real or fabulous,
act important parts in his battles ; so, too, has Israel's
Grod directed Israel's people. But modern history gives
us no very clear or satisfactory account of interior influ
ences acting any part either in the production or
prosecution of wars. Such at least is history under a
general view. But, then, such cases as that of Joan
of Arc, or rather, the part which she bore in the
French armies, may be exceptions. But her case shows
but one side of interior powers, that which exalts and
leads to conquest, and not that which bewilders and
deceives ; nor does it give us the mode of operation
through which interior beings influence the minds of
men. But now we have data in regard to this point
which should neither be lost to futurity, nor should we,
who are at this time the victims of imposing myste
rious powers, fail to appropriate our knowledge to our
advantage. Brutus had his evil genius, and Charles I.
saw the silver head mysteriously fall from his cane,
while he sat befote his accusers. But modern history
fails to give us an account of any general and continued
series of mysterious phenomena, until we come down to
our own time: thus we live in an age which either in
its phenomena, or in our facilities for understanding
them, differ from all the ages which have preceded it.
The phenomena which were, for twelve or fifteen years
preceding the present war, discovered in the Northern
States, and particularly in those in which the puritanic
blood most flowed, were just what they professed to be

Spiritual Phenomena. 5
— spiritual manifestations; and, as will hereafter be
shown, the causes which have inoculated the northern
mind with its madness. Most persons will no doubt
remember the general features of their developments ;
ponderable bodies, tables, benches, chairs, bureaus, bed
steads, and other substantive things were moved by
occult forces, were lifted, tilted, turned over, and made to
perform many other singular feats. Raps were heard
on furniture, on walls, floors, ceilings, and elsewhere,
within, but not, to our knowledge, outside of houses;
and men and women were made to speak and write in
language and characters not their own.
We are well aware of many deceptious performances,
but notwithstanding them all, our investigations have
proved, beyond a doubt, a reality, which no imposture
can disturb. The acting agents were spiritual. On this
point there is no room for disputation. But it is in
regard to kind and character that spiritualists have been
deceived. They, or rather a majority of them, have
drank from a poisoned fountain.
In Leviticus, chapters xix. and xx. we read of
"familiar spirits;" and in Eph. ii. 2" of "the prince of
the power of the air." Many of the spirits now com
municating are, no doubt, of the familiar kind, for in
their communications they are often so familiar and
trifling as much to discredit belief. But with their
vanity and familiarity, there is often associated a
vengeance, which discloses a character more demoniac
than familiar. The war which is upon us, these spirits
have induced, by preparing the minds of men for its
inauguration, and now, through a president and his
advisers, whom they control, they are hurrying the
country on to its destruction.

6 Rappings Directing the War.
On this point our general knowledge of the subject
leaves us no room for doubting. But in addition thereto
we are informed, by persons who profess to understand
the secret condition of things at Washington, that Mr.
Lincoln is not only a spiritualist of the abolitionist
school, but has his media around him, and is, and has
been, from the beginning of his term, directing the war
under the direction of spirit rappings. Such men as
Robert Dale Owen, of Indiana, Judge Edmonds, of New
York, and Andrew Jackson Davis, of New Jersey, are
said to be almost constantly around him, advising
him from the spirit world, and urging him onward in
his abolition, death-dealing policy. But it is not alone
in these uncommissioned advisers that Mr. Lincoln finds
spiritualistic support, nor are they their country's worst
enemies, for they are honest enough to declare their
reasons with their designs. But in the cabinet and in
congress, and in various other official positions, are many
other men equally reliant on spiritual communications,
and equally adherent to the rappings, but without the
same honesty to declare their secret springs of ac
tion. Secretary Chase, Senator Wade, and Joshua R.
Gfiddings, all of this state, are (if their spiritualistic
friends may be relied upon,) men of this particular
stamp. Mr. Wade's wife is said to be one of the best
mediums in- Ohio, and through her he is said to be kept
advised of interior objects. Messrs. Chase and Gfiddings
may not be so fortunate in their families, but a little
inquiry either at Cincinnati or Columbus, Ohio, will dis
close the fact that both have for years been consulting
the rappings. [See note on page 115.]
Mr. Gfreely, of the New York Tribune, may also be
included in the same list, although he voluntarily

Spiritualistic Advisers. 7
appeared in his paper, some years ago, and renounced
all the faith, in the communications, which he once enter
tained. But this renunciation, we have understood, was
made only for a disguise, in order that he might operate
more effectually on the public mind. Henry Ward
Beecher has also, through his paper, the "Indepen
dent," volunteered a denial, a denial not of his spiritual
reliance, but of his being spiritually influenced in his
preachings. Such a denial, of course, extends but a little
way, and there leaves the apprehension that the greater
point, the question of reliance on the rappings, has
been intentionally omitted. Mr. Beecher's whereabouts
may be ambiguous ; but it is a well known fact that the
most ultra spiritualists of New York not only patronize
his paper, but attend his meetings, and heartily approve
of his discourses.
In these names may be seen a few, and but. a few, of
the men high in power and influence, who fancy them
selves in possession of higher lights than those to which
the country at large has : ascended, and who, in conse
quence, assume a superiority, and from it as an assumed
altitude, preach the doctrine of a "Higher Law," — of
an authority above our civil polity.
The article called "McClellan's Dream," which
appeared in the spiritualistic papers, and also in extra
sheets, about the time of that officer's appointment to the
eastern army, may be trifling in itself, yet may some
day lead to more important disclosures. It may dis
close a fellow feeling between the General and the Presi
dent, in their reliance on the rappings, and so display
one, at least, of the causes which may have led to the
General's appointment to the Potomac command. If a
man believes my faith, I, of necessity, believe his. The

8 Spiritualistic Advisers.
General may have been rapped into comnaancl but as
the intelligence of familiar spirits is of all in* lligence
the most vacating, it is highly probable that if the spir
its rapped him into command at one sitting, they at
another may have rapped him out agam.
Mr. Lincoln is by no means neglectful of his spiritual
istic friends, nor is he averse to having them around
him, a fact which' may not only be seen in his social
relations, as above noticed, and in his particular attention
to " Progressive Friends " (a new name for his kind of
spiritualists), but it may be seen in some of his appoint
ments; one of which, because of the relations which
surround it, we will here notice. It is the appointment
of a trance lecturer to a position at Washington within
hailing distance of the President's mansion.
This lecturer for many years traveled over the north
western country, and while at Springfield in Illinois, is
said to have made Mr. Lincoln's house one of his points
of stopping. But this latter we have heard of only since
Mr Lincoln's election, and as many things are said of
men, after they, acquire distinction, it may or may not
be true. But this much we know to be reliable, that
soon after Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, this same trance
lecturer received an appointment to a position near the
President, where he still is, ready at call to serve his
excellency, as the witch of Endor served the Hebrew
king, to bring forth the spirits of the dead.
These facts may serve to awaken the American peo
ple to a sense of their condition — to point them to real
causes, and to show them that they are the subjects of
a cruel and unparalleled imposition — to unfold to them
the reason why fifteen hundred million dollars of their
property has already been worse than thrown away, 

Spiritual Causes. 9
why three hundred thousand of their young men have
been sent to untimely graves, — why the nation has been
excessively vain, — why men have denounced negro sla
very to deceive others until they deceived themselves, — •
why we destroyed a union, existing in mutual assent,
and then, in its name, as a deception, sought to establish
another, founded on conquest and military power, — why
the most formidable armies and navies, the world ever
saw, have been rolled back by inferior numbers, — why
we entered the contest with the world on our side, and
now, near its conclusion, with all the world against us,—
and lastly, though not least, why the sun of American
greatness is rapidly sinking in a sea of fraternal blood.
Nature conforms to conditions. The miller is undis
turbed by the rattle of his machinery ; and the inhabi
tants of offensive localities become unconscious of their
odors. So too are the insane unconscious of their mala
dies. It is now so with the American people. They are
mad, made so by an interior influence exerted on their
minds through a process, which we will now in these
writings endeavor to unfold.

CHAPTER II

Inanimate Things— Substance — The Senses — Magnetism and Electricity —
Force — Iron-filings — Unseen Currents — Matter and Spirit.
Before entering upon an exposition of causes, it be
comes necessary, because of the false education of the
times, to first teach men the philosophy of their own be
ing ; for until they understand themselves, they will not
be likely to understand others ; nor can they appreciate
interior causes until they know that interior things exist

10 Substance.
We must first know what is, before we can judge of
causes and effects ; and as substance is fundamental to
thought, mind and vitality, we must first understand its
character before we can have any very clear idea of its
effects and productions. We, therefore, as preliminary
to the consideration of organizations, mind, vitality and
interior influences, devote this chapter to the considera
tion of substance, under its two general divisions.
All positive things are substantive, but all substance
is not material. This is a point to which we call par
ticular attention, for it is one on which the learning of
the age is extremely deficient : men, reason only from
what they know, and knowing only of things material,
their reasoning necessarily runs them into materialism ;
consequently, the reasoning of this age has made it an
age of materialists, and prepared it for such scenes of
blood and destruction as are now passing before us.
Substance fills all space throughout the illimitable
universe, but is divided into two grand divisions, one of
which is tangible to our senses, the other of which is not.
That which is tangible is matter ; that which is not is
spiritual ; or, as we would prefer calling it, is primaterial
substance. We call it pri or before, because it existed be
fore matter. Before creation it is supposed to have ex
isted alone, and to have been from eternity. But when
the time came for a change, or the fiat of deity went
forth for the movement of original elements in the
work of creation, then matter was evolved from spirit,
and worlds rolled into being. Thus matter, which for
the sake of elucidating properties, we have called a sub
stance, is, in reality, but a condition of the one and only
substance, which is spiritual.
We receive all our knowledge of existing things

The Senses. 11
through our senses. These senses are five in number.
We see, hear, touch, taste and smell. But we see, hear,
touch, taste and smell nothing but matter ; consequently
to matter only are these senses confined ; and as they
are the only avenues to the mind's consciousness from
the outer world, or from what exists out of the mind, we
are of necessity (under ordinary circumstances,) confined
in our knowledge of objects to material things. But the
intangible division of substance is still of us and around
us, but not the object of our senses.
Matter is that on which' the senses act. But in the
elucidation of properties, it may be noticed, that all kinds
or conditions of matter are not objective to all the five
senses. Some things are soundless, some tasteless, some
inodorous, and still others transparent, or non-objec
tive to the sense of vision. This latter kind may be a
• solidity, and because it may be so, will probably best
elucidate the general proposition of substantive intangi
bility. Transparent solids, as pure glass, are intangible
to at least three of %h.e five senses, to taste, smell, and
vision. But they are tangible to touch, consequently,
they may be struck, and so made to produce sounds,
which makes them tangible to the other sense, the sense
of hearing. But could we take from them their tangi
bility, or objectability, to the sense of touch, then they
would at once become non-objective to any or all of the
senses, and so at once pass, not in space, but in condi
tion, beyond our perceptibilities. We see objects beyond:
a pane of clear glass as perfectly as if the glass did not
intervene, consequently the glass is not objective to our'
vision, but it is to our touch; it obstructs our passage,,
and by this property alone makes its presence known.
This susceptibility to touch alone gives it material idbn-

12 Intangible Substance.
tity, consequently, could this be taken from it, it would
lose its material character, and at once become as spirit
substance. From this elucidation . it will be seen that
the division between matter and spirit is not so obscure
as might at first thought be imagined. The relations
which they bear to our senses, is what alone, to our con
sciousness, divides them from each other.
. Transparent solids serve for an elucidation of princi
ples, but it is not in them that we find the closest analo
gy between matter and spirit. But, on the contrary,
some substances are so remote from contact with our
senses, as to leave doubts of the division to which they
belong. The two best known of these are ordinary mag
netism and electricity. They are known to exist at all
times, in and around us, but, ordinarially, we are uncon
scious of their presence ; and in regard to the latter,
when produced and received in a Ley den jar, it is again
lost when the two foils are connected with a conducting
substance,, which shows it in its ordinary condition to be
intangible to the senses.
The charges of the two foils of the jar discharge into
¦each other, so that they pass, not in space, but in con
dition, beyond the reach of all our powers of discern
ment, consequently the inevitable conclusion is that the
electrical fluid, in its normal, as well as in its abnormal
state, .exists around us, but in a condition in which the
human senses are incapable of discerning it.
The common bar, or horse-shoe magnet, will give us
some idea of magnetism, and prove its direct intangibil
ity to any of the senses. We may examine the surround
ings of the bar with all the immediate powers with which
nature has endowed us, still we can discover nothing
more than we find around a piece of wood, or any other

Intangible Substance. 13
inert material. But the moment we bring the bar in
proximity with some ferruginous substance, we discover
a power acting beyond the surface of the tangible body.
Something we now know is there, on which our senses
do not act. This is one more step in our elucidation, or
demonstration of intangible substantive existence ; but
we may advance still another, for if we lay a paper over
the bar and sprinkle on it iron filings or India dust, we
will find the position which that intangible something
occupies. The filings or dust will arrange themselves in
curved lines between the poles, and in similar lines from
the poles outwardly. Thus we not only find the pres
ence, but the position of an intangible substance sur
rounding the bar. A something is there which we can
•neither see, feel, taste nor smell. But our scholastic phi
losophers, in ignorance of its real character, content
themselves, with simply calling it a " force. " But what
is a -force is a question which they entirely fail to answer.
A force cannot be produced by nothing. This would be
unphilosophical. What then is it? We will answer
with our own definition. A force is the momentum of a
substance in motion. This gives us a complete answer,
and in its application shows us that a substance, intan
gible to- the human senses, surrounds the magnetic
bar. These experiments are very simple,, and may very
easily be tested. But a still more interesting elucidation
of intangible substantive presence, may be found in the
hypothesis, by which philosophers account for the polar
ity of the magnetic needle. They assume, upon the
authority of very convincing electrical experiments, that
a current of electricity is constantly sweeping around
our world, from east to west, which puts in motion a

14 Limit of the Senses. ..
current of magnetism between the poles, which in its
turn directs the needle in its polar bearing.
* This hypothesis, if admitted, and we know of none
who now question its accuracy, gives us not only one, but
two great oceans of substance, sweeping constantly
and transversely around our world, but unseen, unfelt,
and, in every other sensitive way, unknown to us, who
live, move, and have our being in them.
These are known facts, or established conclusions, and
although confined to the plane of nature, demonstrate
the existence of substance far beyond the reach of the
human senses.
But the senses, restricted in their^capacities, are also,
in the various grades of animated beings, variously re
stricted in their numbers, which is also suggestive of
corresponding limitations in those who are endowed with
the greatest number of faculties. Some of the lower
animals are supposed to have but one sense, which is
that of touch. To them four-fifths of nature must be
an entire blank, for they can have no knowledge of any
of the facts which are attainable through the other four
senses. Taste, odors, sounds and light are all beyond
the possibility of their conceptions. The world may
yield its sweetness, the fields their fragrance, the sky be
rend with thunders, and the sun rise and set in his illu
minating grandeur, but all these great wonders of na
ture must pass unknown to the animal to which nature
has given but the single sense. It has knowledge, it is
true, but all its knowledge is confined to its immediate
contact, for it can have no knowledge of existences' which
lie beyond its touch.
Thus, as the animal of but one sense is confined to its
sphere, so is man to his, which is only enlarged by his

Limit of the Senses. 15
senses being a little more numerous, but, to the, limit of
his sphere, he is as much confined as the animal of but
one sense is to its. Neither can pass the bounds to
which nature has confined it. Thus man, in his abso
lute knowledge, like every other animal, is restricted to
his senses. But had he a sixth sense cognizable of other
existences, he ihight not only discover the substance
which surrounds the magnetic bar, and the great oceans
of electricity and magnetism which sweep around our
world, but his eyes might be opened to the spiritual
things which in every way surround him.
In the contemplation of this idea, let us suppose that
man had been placed on the earth without the sense of
hearing. How then would it be possible to convince
him of the existence of sounds, of the melody of harmoni
ous arrangements, or the terrific explosions of thunders,
volcanoes and artillery. He would have nothing with
in his own nature, by which to compare the phenomena,
and as a consequence, would be as likely to form a wrong
idea as a correct one. The same may be said of light,
for had man not been gifted with the sense or power of
seeing, he could have no knowledge of light, of colors,
of shades or of beauty, nor could he be made sensible of
their existences. In the same way is he now conditioned
in regard to things on which his senses are not made to
act. Magnetism and electricity are supposed to be inter
mediate between matter and spirit, and to partake of
both characters. But on this latter point, we may have
nothing very reliable en which to base our opinion ; be
sides, we have the opinions of other very rigid investi
gators to a contrary belief. The late Dr. Hare, of Phil
adelphia, with whom we held a conversation about a

16 Intermediate Substance.
year before his death, was of the opinion that both be
longed exclusively to the world of matter. This may
be so. They may be material, may have the material
properties of impenetrability to things material, for such
are the properties of matter to matter, and of spirit to
spirit. But spirit and matter never come in contact
with each other, and however paradoxical may be the
fact to us, they seem to occupy the same space.
Our scholastic philosophy in regard to matter, as in
regard to almost every thing else, is extremely deficient.
By it we know of matter Only by- certain properties, its
mobility, impenetrability, divisibility and extension.
But these leave us in utter ignorance of its essence, and
of much else of its real character ; still we know it to be
impressible, and so much so as to leave us entirely un
informed of the extent to which its impressibility may
be conducted. Sir Isaac Newton is reported once to
have said, that could the world be compressed to an ab
solute solidity, it might, possibly, be reduced to a cubic
inch. This, of course, we regard as hyperbolical ; still
we apprehend that matter is susceptible of a condensa
tion much below all ordinary supposition. Mr. Pr\estly,
in his development of Moscovich's theory, holds that
matter consists of physical points which repel and at
tract each other. This probably approaches nearer than
all others to the spiritualistic idea, which is, that all ma
terial bodies are composed of particles which never
touch each other, but are held in composition by their
polarities, and, as a consequence, are indefinitely com
pressible. This may account for the reason why spirit
ual bodies may pass unobstructed through material
things. But probably, were we better informed, we
would find other and better reasons. Matter may have

Properties of Matter 17
many properties, and be as much of a riddle as the foun
tain out of which it came, but were we allowed to give it
our own definition, we would call it, that division of sub
stance which is tangible to the senses. Thus we here leave
the subject of this chapter, under the conclusion that
substance exists under two grand divisions known to
our comprehensions by the extent and limit of our sen
sitive capacities.

CHAPTER III,

Animate Things— Two Bodies — Spirit Body only Lives — Senses Change —
Flesh but Clothing — Life — The Living Man Unseen — Spiritual
Influence — Magnetism — Mesmer— Influence Bewildering — Demons
Magnetize — Mirage — Administration Demonized.
Having in the preceding chapter considered matter
and spirit, in regard to their properties of tangibility
and intangibility to the human senses, we will now con
sider them as elements in the constitution of organized
beings. Man is a duality of these two substances. He has a
material body and a spiritual body. But the spiritual
body only lives, so that the living man is at all times, in
this world or out of it, a spiritual being. The material
body, which is, in the main, but a compound or consoli
dation of gases, is, of itself, lifeless — as lifeless as the
gases of which it is composed, but is animated and moved
by the spirit within it ; consequently, the thinking, willing
and acting man is at all times, here, or hereafter, the
spirit man, and, as spiritual substance is every where,
either as spiritual atmosphere or something else, he lives,
as effectually, in the spiritual world, while he carries- his
2

18 Organized Beings.
load of flesh around the globe with him, as he does after
he has thrown it off. But for some great reason, in the
divine economy, he is compelled to live here in igno
rance of this his real condition. We are organized in
matter, and pass through it, preparatory to a purer exist
ence ; and, as incident to our passage, undergo two great
and important changes. The first is when we are born
into the world, the other when we are born, or pass out
of it. When we enter this world, from a life in the
womb, we change our mode of breathing, and discover
a new sense, the sense of vision, for then light, for the
first time, opens upon us. . When we are born out of the
world, our senses change again, so that we then take
cognizance of spiritual things, as we now do of material
ones. This is the second birth, and as our mothers bore the
pain of our passage into the world, we must, ourselves,
bear the pain of our passage out of it. We pass unseen,
because spirit is intangible. But we pass as the butter
fly passes from the worm, leaving the old shell behind
us. Such is our transit through the world and out of it.
But this much of our discourse may be a digression from
our subject, which is only to consider man as an active
agent in the earth life.
The material body is constantly forming and exhaust
ing, so that in every seven years it is entirely changed,
has returned bone and muscle to the earths and gases of
which it was composed. But notwithstanding this
change, and succession of changes, the man remains the
same identical person, has the same peculiarities, habits,
appetites, proclivities and appearances, remembers the
past, loves his friends, hates his enemies, and is known
as the same being to all who had ever before known him.

• Organized Beings. 19
This would not be so if the material body were the living
man ; for, with its changes of particles, it would change
in character ; but it is so, because the spirit-man lives
and survives its material clothing. Change of flesh is
but change of rags, and so rapid and successive is that
change, that the man of three score years and ten, could
he make the computation, would find that he had worn
out as many suits of flesh and blood as he had of cloth
and linen.
This spirit-man, not the dead materiality, is the being
who wills, acts, thinks and directs the movements of ar
mies and nations, consequently he, not the dissolving
flesh, is the identity to be considered in the contempla
tion of all- human affairs. He is, as we are told, curi
ously and wonderfully made, but he is no more curious
in his structure than in his properties. He lives, but
why he lives, or what is life, is a problem for which he
has never yet found a solution. He sleeps, dreams and
wakes, but why he does either, he is not only unable to
tell, but is not able even to give a plausible reason. One
half his muscular system obeys his will, the other half
rejects it. His hands, his feet, his legs, his arms, move
as his will directs them. But his blood flows, his lungs
heave, his digestion acts, his pulse beats, and his secre
tions pursue their steady course as independently as if
no will, thought, or mind reigned within the same ma
terial system. Why are all these things so ? and men,
generation after generation, drifting down the stream of
time, in utter ignorance of their causes ? They may be
impenetrable mysteries. . But this much we know, that
man, clothed in materiality, lives in darkness of his real
condition, and of course, in his normal sensibitities, is
unable to see, hear, touch, taste and smell spiritual

20 The Spirit Man.
,things. In this darkness his senses increase, rather
than remove his spiritual blindness. He sees men in
their materiality, and, relying on his own senses, is con
tented with his observation, seldom thinking of their
being a condition beyond what he sees ; yet it is a real
substantive fact, that the man, whom he sees, is but a
material outwork, and not the real man who addresses
him. The thinking, willing man — the man of volition,
is a spiritual being, and, as a consequence, not an object
of the human senses. Men thus reliant on their own
senses, and indulging in the contracted range of objec
tive tangibilities, may very reasonably doubt their own
spirituality, and revolt at the very idea of unseen and
intangible populations surrounding them. But until
they can explain the cause of life, and its various inci
dents to which we have above called attention, they
should, at least, be modest in their denunciation of things
which lie beyond their comprehensions.
Having now directed attention to man as he exists,
' behind his materiality, we next proceed to consider him,
not only as a spiritual being, acting from his own voli
tions, but as a being influenceable by an unseen world
which surrounds him.
Matter and spirit, as we have above said, never come
in direct contact with each other, consequently even the
spirit man does not act directly on the material body.
But intervening between him and it is a quasi spiritual
substance, which, for the want of a better name, we here
call magnetism. It connects with both matter and spirit,
and by its susceptibility of spiritual movement, is made,
by the will-power of the mind, to move the material body.
This is its particular office within the system to which
it belongs. But it has another official character. It

Mesmerism. 21
surrounds the spirit-man, and is so conditioned as to be
penetrable and influencable by the magnetism of another
person ; and when so influenced, it performs a reverse
action, which is back upon the will and mind of its pro
prietor. In the spirit world the will is an executive power,
and performs there what the hands perform here — it
executes the wishes of the mind. By this power, one
person, positively charged, may infuse his magnetism
into another, and so will and direct the man, and in
time influence his thoughts.
This substance, surrounding the body, is analogous to
the grosser fluid of the same name which surrounds the
magnetic bar. But there is no tangible substance, with
in our knowledge, that will identify its presence or posi
tion around the human body, as the filings of iron or
India dust identify the corresponding substance around
the magnet. Still there are two known ways by which
its presence may be made slightly tangible to the hu
man senses. The first is by the fluid passing directly
from the ends of the fingers. Let a person, strongly
magnetic, pass the ends of his fingers within an inch, or
an inch and a half, df the palm of your hand, and you
may feel a sensation, as if the fingers were blowing cold
on the palm. Some persons, by passing the fingers of
one hand near the hollow of the other, experience the
same sensation. This is probably the most direct means
of discovering the presence of the fluid. The other mode
is equally simple, but probably not so clear and convinc
ing. It is in those cases of paralysis called sleeping of
a limb, in which we feel a prickling sensation in the
paralysed member. If the part affected be the foot or
leg, let a person, no matter who, pass his hands down

22 Mesmerism.
the limb a few times in succession, from the knee to the
limb's extremity, and the prickling sensation, as it leaves
the limb, will pass into the very end of the great toe.
The hands should touch the limb, but the effect may be
produced without contact. The magnetic fluid of the
limb is by the magnetism of the hands put in motion.
The power which a snake exerts in charming a bird,
is, in its ability to move a magnetic current, and infuse
its own magnetism into that of its victim. It acquires,
through this ability, a control over the will of the bird,
by which the latter is compelled to obey the will of the
former, and not its own. We have seen men under the
same influence, not by serpents it is true, but by other
men, compelled, like the bird, to do the very things
which they did not want tp. do.
This magnetic influence of the human system was
first discovered by Frederick Anthony Mesmer, and in
honor of its discoverer is now called mesmerism. But
mesmerism, magnetism and probably Baron Reichen-
bach's odic force, are but different names for the same
thing; and biology, psychology, and magnetic or mes
meric influence, but different names for the same effects.
They are all the magnetism of one system .exerted on
the will, the mind, or muscular powers of another.
Mesmer, however much derided by materialists, is
still the world's creditor to a much larger amount than
ever he became its debtor. But his discoveries seem to
have extended only to the influence of one spirit in the
material form over another in like conditions ; and even
in this he does not appear to have understood very clear
ly how the influence is exerted. ' He does not seem to
have known of the division between the spiritual and
the material man, or of there being any such a thing as

Mesmerism. 23
spiritual influence connected with the power. But now
it is well known to exist, and that spirits out of the ma
terial form can exert it on those who are still in earth's
conditions. Through this process of magnetization,
spirits influence the minds of men, and impress them for
good or for evil.
Under the mesmeric influence, where the operation
has been often repeated, the mesmerized person has been
discovered, not only to embrace the opinions of the mag-
netizer, but finally- to become bewildered in mind. The
same effect is produced when spirits magnetize, a fact
which will no doubt be remembered by most, if not by
all persons, who paid any attention to the spiritual trans
actions, as they transpired during the twelve or fifteen
years preceding the war. Many persons became vision
ary and squandered their estates ; others became insane,
and were sent to lunatic asylums ; others wandered
homeless through the country ; while still others commit
ted suicide, in order that they might follow deceased
friends to the spirit world. The press resounded with
incidents of this kind, but as prejudice never stops with
truth, we have no doubt that realities were very much
exaggerated ; still there was truth enough to show the
tendency of the influence which was then operating on
the country. That influence is still in operation.
Any one person's magnetism infused into another's,
will, we think, produce disorder ; for no two natures, at
least of the same sex, are so identical as to blend together
in entire harmony. But beyond humanity there are
other conditions ; for as we intimated in a former chapter,
many of the spirits surrounding or existing in this world
are of the "familiar" or demoniac kind. These have
a magnetism peculiar to themselves, fired with venge-

24 : Magnetism Bewilders.
ance, hatred and imposture, and, as a consequence, when
infused into the spirits of men, it hurries them down the
broad road to ruin.
People are never conscious of this influence, but see
things through a' kind of magnetical mirage, and, like
the famishing traveler on the desert, who sees water
falling around him, never reach the object of their pur
suits. Such is, and has been from the commencement
of this war, the condition of this people, but it has been
particularly so with the administration and its support
ers. They saw complete success but sixty days before
them, when the first troops were summoned to the battle.
When these days were ended the object required just
sixty more, and so on kept retreating, but never got
farther than the rolling waters retreat from the famish
ing traveler ; indeed as realities become further removed,
imagination brings them nearer. We have now, as a
nation, exhausted our material resources, sent three
hundred thousand of "our active young men to untimely
graves, buried .ourselves beneath a debt which must en
slave our remotest posterity ; incurred the censxire of the
world, and brought nations, hovering with their fleets
and armies around us, ready to strike us down when we
are no longer able to struggle in our own defence ; still
the mirage of success approaches, when the reality is
forever gone. More blood and more battles, as more
rum to the drunkard, is still the demoniac cry which
arises from the intoxicated nation.

25

CHAPTER IV.
Classification of Spirits — Evil Spirits in Control — Spiritual Philoso
phy — Political Theory — Abolition — Free Love and Agrarianism —
All Governments Resisted — Clergy Receive the. Influence — Church
men Impressible, and how Influenced by Demons.
The ancients, who may have had some facilities not
now known to the moderns, have variously classified
interior beings. They speak of saints, of angels, and of
archangels ; of imps, of demons, of devils, and of familiar
spirits ; of gods, demigods, and of just men made per
fect. But many of their characters are no doubt fabu
lous ; still their divisions are not without some ele
ments of reality ; for we now find a great diversity of
kind and character in the world of intangible beings.
There are no doubt imps and demons, and familiar
spirits, who torment the world ; and angels and archan-
angels, who at times bless humanity with their presence.
Our investigations have convinced us of all these facts.
But our object now is to* consider the characters of those
spirits who have bewildered the nation, and who are
now driving it onward to its destruction. They are (if
we may rely upon the reports of seeing media) in count
less numbers around us, in the earth, and in the air ;
and influence men through their magnetism, as described
in the preceding chapter. Their number or name (if
we may use a biblical term of description,) is legion.
But whether it is through an extraordinary accumulation
of numbers, or through some changed or modified con
dition of interior things, which has given them their pres
ent dominion, we are not prepared to determine. Both
may have acted important parts, but as spirits are now
enabled to come into what is called rapport with the

26 A Spiritual Philosophy.
human mind, it is highly probable that some change
has permitted or enabled, them to exert a power which
at some other times may be held under restrictions. A
very little change in either or both of those great oceans
of magnetism and electricity, alluded to in chapter II.
might in many ways effect the relation, of spirits to us.
But as our views in regard to this point are but appre
hensions, we need not further pursue them in speculation.
These spirits, however, are now in control, and as
they impregnate people with their magnetism, most spir
itualists are in rapport with them, and as a consequence,
feel and act under their inspiration. For this reason
the majority of the spiritualists, as well as of the sectar
ians, who are alike inspired, are a body of bewildered
fanatics. These spirits have taught a philosophy, from which
some ideas may be obtained of their kind and character,
and in which may be seen some causes for the madness
which is now stamping disgrace, ruin and folly, on every
page of our national history.
Persons who have attended spiritual lectures may
possibly remember some of the points on which the
philosophy is founded. But if they do not, a reference
to the spiritual literature, — the books, pamphlets, papers
and periodicals, which, for the twelve or fifteen years
preceding the war, passed through the American press —
will revive their memories. No literature was more
abundant in its time, nor were men ever more infatuated
with a new theory than were the more visionary of the
spiritualists with this new philosophy.
It assumes as a fundamental ideality, that all things
are intrinsically equal, and susceptible of continual and
endless development, until they reach the standard of

A Spiritual Philosophy. 27
Deity. Commencing with the atomic world, as the low
est phase of materiality, it assumes that even the grain
of sand contains all the elements of Deific power,
and wants but development to give it Deific capacity.
Thus all things are included between these extremeties,
and as man is but an unfolding of elements, the grain
of sand, as a necessity, contains all the elements of hu
manity. The process of unfolding is, of course, not pa
tent to the world of exterior sensibilities, but passes un
seen, through the different forms of animation — through
bugs and flies, and cats and dogs, and cows and horses,
and the like, until the being ultimates in the human
form. From this assumed equality and power of unfolding
spring other principles which make up the sum of the
spiritualistic political theory. All things being equal, of
course, all men are equal ; and as all are alike suscepti
ble of unfolding, all may, of course, be developed to the
same standard.
At .this point, though denying the common origin of
men, the. spiritualists meet the sectarians in regard to
the intrinsic equality of the human races, and as a con
sequence, have united with New England's "strong
minded women " in an effort to unfold the latent germ
of Deity in the brains of runaway or "contraband"
negroes. If a grain of sand may be converted into a
human being, why, they very properly ask, may not a
negro, who has reached the plane of humanity, be edu
cated into a white man. The logical deduction may be
conclusive, but education seems to be too slow a process
for our remarkably progressive administration. Mr.
Lincoln has been unable to endure the tardy movement,
and has, accordingly, by a single dash of his pen, con-

28 Spiritualistic Freedom.
verted all negroes into "Free Americans of African
descent," thus practically outrunning the stream on
which he rode, and from which he drew his inspirations.
As all are assumed to be equals, and susceptible of
like unfoldings, all are assumed to be entitled to the
same quantity, kind and character of freedom, conse
quently Liberty becomes the great ringing or noise-
making department of the theory. All must be fre& —
untrammeled and unrestricted ; thus all within the influ
ence , believers or non-believers, churchmen or infidels,
have dashed forth in the propagation of wild and im
practicable theories of political liberty. The fire and
the delusion make the radical, and impel him onward
to the overthrow of all restrictions, consequently all
governments are alike objectionable to him.
The German refugees warred against their qwn gov
ernments, in Europe; then came here and denounced
ours. The Irish warred against a union of force at
home, but here took up arms for such a union's support.
Our sectarians could not endure a union with slavery,
before the war, but no sooner' was the war inaugurated
than they became wild and furious in supporting it ; thus
reason, truth and propriety are alike absent from the
power which moves the mentality of the nation. There
is an interior fire which is upheaving all the moral strata
of society.
This spiritualistic freedom, now venting its fury against
the institution of negro slavery, in America, is by no
means restricted to this single object in its contemplated
aggressions, nor would it have been silent had there
been no negro slavery to war with. It is, on the con
trary, general in its opposition to all legal and govern
mental restrictions, consequently, all titles to real estate

Slavery, Property and Marriage. 29
and separate ownership of property, are among the as
sumed evils against which it is preparing to dash its
lances. It admits of no right in one man to hold do
minion over a portion of God's earth which is not alike
open and free to all the rest of his fellow beings ; nor
does it hold contracts, enforceable against the will of the
obligor, as any thing less than arbitrary and oppressive.
As a consequence, it assumes a new basis, which is,
" That man is a law unto himself," and that all other
restrictions are tyranny, and as such should be resisted.
Marriage falls under the common head of restrictions,
and is therefore alike the object of spiritualistic denun
ciation. It binds one woman to one man, and is there
fore assumed to enslave her to a master. Thus slavery,
property, and marriage, are the three principal objects
against which the spiritual madness now upon the World
wages its'fiercest battle.
The sectarian clergy, it is true, denounced the whole
spiritualistic movement, while in its full tide, before the
war. But while they denounced it, probably because it
thinned their congregations, and so reduced their livings,
they knowingly or unknowingly embraced its theories,
until they are now as much devoted as the avowed
spiritualists to the. doctrine of a common equality of the
races ; of their equal progressive ability ; and, as the sum
of all, they are fully as loud and wild in their shrieks for
boundless liberty.
Those clergy, it is true, give a different reason for the
foundation of their faith. They believe, or assume to
believe, in a commnn origin of all the races. But were
they not influenced by the same magnetism which
controls the demented spiritualists, they would find
an abundance of authority for proving that the races are

30 Churchmen Demonized.
not equal ; that they are not alike susceptible of develop
ment ; and that negro slavery, as it exists in the United
States, instead of being sinful, is a highly proper and
humane institution. But men demoniacally magnetized
see all things in distortion. *
But the question may be asked, why are churchmen or
sectarians, who denounced the spiritual movement, now
subject to its influence ? We will answer : Churchmen,
as a whole, are more than any other body of men sub
ject to spiritual impression. It is their susceptibility to
the impression which makes them church members.
They feel an impression why they should unite, or con
gregate in churches — feel something which they are un
able to define, but under which they run into church
communities. They may call it the spirit of Christ
working upon them, or by whatever name they may
choose to define it, still it is spiritual, and, as many of
our churches are converted into mutual insurance asso
ciations, he may not have been far wrong who assumed
that the influence was as likely to be of a demon or devil,
as of him whom the devil placed on a pinnacle of the
temple. Churchmen, being like other men planted in the
earth's conditions, and being, as a body, more than or-
dinarially impressible, they partake more of the spirit
ual influences which surround them than most other
people ; and as these influences are now demoniac, they
are, as a consequence, more than the generality of per
sons demoniacally impregnated and controled.
When a Methodist jumps, and shouts, and tumbles,
he is influenced by a spirit acting magnetically on his
muscular system ; so is the Quaker, when he is moved
to action in his meetings. But the influence is neither

Origin of Men. 31
higher nor holier than that which moves the trance me-
diumistic spiritualist in his discourses. Nor is the one
nearer heaven, or farther from hell, than his fellow en
thusiast, who is now with him, howling for blood in a
war, which is sapping the foundations of American power,
and extinguishing all the lights of her greatness.

CHAPTER V.
Origin op Men — Declaration of Independence — Negro's and Cauoassian's
Opposites — Instincts — African Slavery — Negro Nature — African
Butcheries — Progressive and Non-Progressive Beings — Mind seen
in Works — Fancied Evils — Woman's Liberty — Free Lovers — Who
are Free.
Pulpit politicians and spiritualists differ very widely
in regard to the origin of men. One assumes, that all
sprung from a single progenitor ; the other, that progen
itors were as numerous as the races now existing, or as
have existed in the world. Thus they start from oppo
sites, but soon meet on a common ground. They meet
by assuming that all are now equals, and capable ( at
least within the earth life,) of equal unfoldings. On
this assumption they build their abolition theory, conse
quently, if it be groundless, their superstructure must
fall for the want of a foundation. For this reason, we
will now in this and the succeding chapter, give it some
attention. Men are not equals, not even of the same family, but
on the contrary, are invariably unequal. No two look
alike, think alike, or act alike ; nor are they equals in
size, shape or abilities. All differ in some particulars,

32 The Declaration of Independence.
which has induced the poet to say, that "All are but
parts of one stupendous whole. " The dwarf is not the
equal of the giant, nor is the fool the equal of the wise
man. But then governments may rest on an assumption
of equality, in order that power may be limited, and na
ture in the man left to work out its own destiny. But
even this assumption, which is doubted by many in its
applicability to any race of men, is. known to be inappli
cable to all races below the Caucassian. Men of the
same stock have some common properties, which adapt
them to particular rules. But the races, Negroes, In
dians, Malays, Asiatics and Caucassians, are no more
alike, than are the different species of the canine genus ;
nor are they adaptable to the same forms of govern
mental rule. This the experience of the world abund
antly proves, for no two races have adopted the same
system. But then, in opposition to nature, we are cited
to the opinions of men [for proving a general equality ;
and among the authorities urged with most confidence,
is the Declaration of American Independence, in which
it is assumed as a self evident fact, that all men are crea
ted equal. ' What the author meant by the word created,
or what the clerical politician gains by the authority, un
der his theory, in which it is assumed that but one man
was created, is more than we are able to determine.
But we are by no means disposed to hinge on this point, or
. to stand upon any position which may even bear the sem
blance of a quibble. Let any construction then be as
sumed which is desirable. Let it be said that all who
are born are created, or that none are born and all
created ; if this construction is most pleasing to our ad
versaries, for, under any assumption which may be
taken, a fair construction of language, with reference to

The Declaration of Independence. 33
time, place, object and intention, will prove beyond
even a possibility of doubt, that nothing could have been
more foreign to the intention of the author of that no
ted instrument, than the assumption of a general equal
ity of all the human races.
The circumstances which surround a people, and the
known facts under which declarations are made, have
much to do in determining their significations, conse
quently writers leave much for their readers to supply ;
and, as language is but the harbinger of thought, when
it is received as the writer intends it to be received, he
has gained his whole point. When Jefferson wrote the
Declaration of Independence, the political society for
which he wrote, and which spoke through his composi
tion, were all white men. Negroes were but chattels,
and, as a consequence, were not considered in connection
with the subject then under debate. Mother England
was then infringing on the rights of her colonists, and,
to justify her assumptions, claimed for her kings and
nobles a- superiority of blood. This distinction our re
bellious ancestors denied, and, to strike it with force,
declared their resistance in the broad and sweeping
language — "That all men are created equal." They
gave force to their declaration by making it thus general,.
but the well known facts which surrounded them vindi
cated its signification. They meant the equality of the
race for which they spoke and acted ; for at the very-
moment the declaration passed their utterance, they
held half a million of negroes as slaves, whom they did
not consider their equals. This the civilized world un
derstood, and accordingly received the declaration as it
was intended. No writer of that day complains of any
inconsistency existing between the declaration and. its>
8

34 The Declaration of Independence.
authors, nor was the point even mooted till many years
afterwards, when English politicians saw in it a possibil
ity of retaliating on America, by giving her an excess of
equality. • England then kindled a flame which the
nosing Yankee — acting through design, after he had
sold his slaves and slave shipping — blew into every
body's face who happened to get near enough to him
to be blown at.
The declaration was unexceptionable in its time, but the
changes which language and conditions have since un
dergone, give currency to a construction which was not
then intended. Indians and negroes were not elements
of the political associations then existing, nor were they
made so by the government subsequently formed under
the name of the United States. Consequently the words
•" People of the United States," as used in the federal
compact of association, do not include negroes and In
dians. This point has several times come before the
United States Supreme Court, and has been solemnly
adjudicated in accordance with the views here presented.
The exclusion of these races in itself is an evidence of
the light in which our ancestors made their declaration.
They denounced the political distinctions of blood, but
neither thought of, nor intended any thing else. They
opposed that which was unnatural — a political distinc
tion which had no foundation in nature. This was their
meaning; but were the same words which they then em
ployed now used in a similar connection, and particu
larly in the Northern States, where slavery has disap
peared, where abolitionists have beaten the air for half
.a century, and where negroes, like bulls and crocodiles
of ancient Egypt, are animals of adoration, there might
be a plausibility in the modern abolitionist's construe-

The Human Races. 35
tion of these memorable words. But language must be
construed as it was given, received, and intended at its
time. The law of Henry VIII. which forbid the im
portation of provisions from Rome, did not apply to
eatables ; yet such has been the change of ideas associa
ted with sounds, that the modern abolitionist might con
tend, with as much propriety, that the law excluded pork
and bacon, as he now holds that Jefferson declared that
whites and negroes are equals.
So much, then, for the Jeffersonian authority of white
and negro equality.
The question of a common or multifarious origin is
practically of no consequence, but it amuses the vision
ary, because it is dimmed by distance. So high an an
tiquity as the origin of animation, descending through
different languages and translations, may well admit of
many fanciful speculations. But while the theorizer
wanders in the darkness of ten thousand generations to
find a beginning, the practical man contents himself
with things as they are, and in the construction of asso
ciations, disposes of men, not as they were, nor as they
may have been, but as he actually finds them. This
lops off a world of confusion. We act only in the pres
ent time, and, of necessity, build our castles of such
materials as the times afford.
We find upon the face of the world a multiplicity of
human races, all varied, and yet all related to each other
as so many species of a common genus, all alike in some
particulars, but very unlike in others. Their complex
ions and physical developments designate them extern
ally, but internally, their minds, instincts, likes and dis
likes, differ as much as do the colors of their skins.
The Malay only rims a muck. The Indian only prefers

36 The Human Races.
the forest to the cultivated field and luxuriant city. The
Asiatic has his peculiarities, finds or fancies honor
in long hair, serves his idols, and is excessively rigid in
his devotidns. The Caucassian thirsts for dominion, is
laborious in mind, and, in the consciousness of a super
ior capacity, admits of no link between himself and the
skies. But the Negro, the Caucassian's opposite, feels
his secondary nature, and to avoid the cares of Life,
which are his most excruciating burdens, throws them,
with the custody of his person, on the shoulders of
another man. Such is his native tendency, and, as a
consequence, all political organizations which have
sprung from his own mind, are built on the relation of
owner and owned. All Africa, of African rule, from
its desert to its southern cape, with its hundred millions
of people, is, say our travellers, a country of masters
and slaves. Why is this so, if such relation is not natural
to the Negro mind ? Governments are made by people,
not people by governments ; consequently, as a people
are, so will their governments be. The one is the
other's index. Show me your governments, said a phi
losopher, and I will tell you what yon are. We do not
see mentalities, instincts, and proclivities, as we see ob
jects and colors, yet all are developed in works and ac
tions. The peculiarity of the hound that runs by sight,
or he that runs by scent, or of the spaniel that takes
the water, or he that shuns it, is shown only in the dis
play of instincts. No man could tell of these opposite
natures without seeing them displayed in action; nor
from color or form could he discover, that in the
Malay mind, there lingered a smouldering fire which,
when inflamed, drives the possessor to the wildness of
"running a muck." Proclivities are not objective to

The Human Races. 37
vision. But he who looks over Africa, Asia, Europe,
and America, and contrasts the mental productions of
their respective people, will see how widely their men
talities differ. The negro's hut and the white man's
palace are exponents of the minds which produced
them. As Timbuctoo is to London, Africa to Europe,
or the institutions of Ashantee and Dahomey to those
of England and France, so is the African mind to the
Caucasian. All races have their peculiarities, but the Caucasian
and the negro, in their instincts as in their exteriors, are
the most dissimilar, and unite in community by virtue of
their oppositions. The one is dominant, the other depend
ent, and by their union, seem to supply each other's defi
ciencies. The negro is pleased to brush the white man's
coat, to comb his hair, or groom his horse, which ser
vices are fully as agreeable to him who receives them.
In the progressive march of humanity, the white man,
or Caucasian, gigantic in mind and ambition, grasps at
supremacy and dominion, and by the force of his own
nature, as if in obedience to the first command of his
creator, moves in the world's subjugation. " Replenish
the world and subdue it," is the commandment of his
Maker. His flags even now wave from every mountain,
his steel glitters on every plain, .and his canvass, broad
and sweeping, whitens every sea. His destiny is do
minion, for no earthly power can resist him.
But not so with the negro. He is passive and de
pendent, of inferior mentality, -and of opposite intuitions.
Ambition has never moved him from the haunts of his
progenitors, and, although the world has rolled through
thousands of years, giving day and night alike to all its
people, and earnestly inviting all to its banquets of

38 The Human Races.
progress, he is the same to-day as when the Phoenecians,
two thousand years ago, first found him in his native
jungles. No efforts, induced by kindness or imposed by
cupidity, could make him more or less than a being of
an inferior order of humanity. Mixed bloods, it is true,
are of higher abilities, but they are not. the beings whose
natures we are now considering. They are intermediate
between the races, partake of both, but represent nei
ther. For centuries the people of Europe labored to improve
the negro's condition. But after a long and arduous
series of adventures, find him to-day no better nor hap
pier than the Catholics of Portugal found him in the
middle ages, when they established their colony of
instruction near the mouth of the Congo. The kings
of Guinea and Soudan still celebrate their coronations,
as did their ancestors a thousand years ago, with the
wholesale murder of slaves. Take for instance a single
case whereby to explain conditions. The succession of
the present king of Ashantee, was celebrated, say
the reports from that county, with the murder of
three thousand human beings, who were marched to . a
pit prepared to receive their bodies, each with a butcher
knife run through his cheeks, and the blade held in
his teeth, with which he was in a few minutes to be
slaughtered. This was to inform the people of that
country of the dignity of the king who was about to rule
over them. Compare this condition of the African slave
with the condition of his kindred in America, and then
tell me why a nation of white men, claiming to be en
lightened, are slaughtering one another to change the
status of four millions of American negroes — the happi
est people in the world — while they close their eyes on

The Human Races. 39
the cruel, barbarous and wretched condition of a hun
dred millions of unlimitedly dependent slaves in Africa.
Is it madness or is it villainy ? But let us return from
this gloomy picture.
In no one effort, save that of acquiring fortune, has
our race been more persistent than in its efforts to reform
the negro, and yet in none other has it more signally
failed ; still it persists, as if maddened by its own disas
ters. It will not be informed. The idea of a common
origin, and native equality, interwoven, however erro
neously, in our religion, or induced by spiritualistic
notions of freedom, furnishes a fanaticism which is alike
arbitrary and enduring. No reason will restrain its
folly, or appease its fury.
Numbers may march to conquest, may scatter armies,
and desolate 'empires ; but they cannot reverse the laws
of nature. The negro cannot be forced from his native
intuitions ; nor is he, beyond a comparatively limited
extent, a being of progress. He is, it is true, of the hu
man genus, but humanity, like the canine races, has its
varieties. Instincts are original ; they come with the being into
being ; but mentality — humanity's distinguishing feature
— is accumulative. Man, of all animated things, is
born the most helpless ; and the Caucasian even more
so than the Negro and Indian ; but by the accumulation
of mentality, which grows with his growth and strength
ens with his years, he becomes the most powerful of
created beings. All start together in this race of pro-.
gress ; and until they have passed a certain number of
years — within the range of boyhood — the negro, say-
men of observation, oustrips the Caucasian. But there
the negro stops, and, measured with the Caucasian,,

40 Party. Colored Animals.
remains a boy all the rest of his life. Thus, while his
intuitions differ from the white man's, his mentality is
confined to a narrower sphere. He is thus compara
tively progressive, although naturalists class him among
non-progressive beings. They say that none progress
but such as are variable in the colors of their reproduc
tion ; or who, in this sense, may be called party-colored.
The white man's or Caucasian's progeny, for we use
these names indiscriminately, differ from each other in
the color of their eyes, hair, and complexion. But not
so with the negro's ; they are all black-eyed and black-
haired, as well as black-skinned. Thus the race is not
party-colored, and under this rule is not progressive. But
we need not mince this subject to Americans who open
their eyes upon objects which surround them ; for who
ever looks upon a body of negroes . and a body of white
men, cannot in candor, pronounce them equals. The lit
tle dark eyes, flat nose, thick lips, bullet head, and an
imal expression of the negro, show, at a glance, his in
ferior nature ; while many other peculiarities, particular
ly, the greater length of the fore-arm, conflict materially
with the idea of a common origin of the races. The
distinction is thus direct in the person. But works are
no less expressive, for he who sees a stately mansion,
decorated and surrounded with works of utility and
beauty, will be deceived if it is not the abode of a white
man; nor will he be less deceived, if the hut by the
way-side, surrounded by weeds and gourds, and its win
dows stuffed with rags, is not the abode of negroes.
But white men, least familiar with the negro charac
ter, have measured him by their own mentalities and
intuitions, and, as a consequence, have given him a
character in their imaginations which he does not pos-

The Negro Nature. 41
sess in nature. Those who know least, and are far
thest removed, imagine most; consequently, the most
zealous African reformers have always been farthest
from Africa. So, too, with abolitionists ; the most zeal
ous have always been farthest from the things of which
they have complained. The people who live in the
midst of slavery approve it, while those at a distance
levy war for its extermination. Only about three hund
red thousand of the southern people own slave property,
yet all, with a unanimity which the world has seldom if
ever before seen, unite in battle for its protection. *Is
not this the approbation of disinterested men who see
the facts, and know best how to judge of their propriety ?
Their knowledge is actual, but men who see things only
in imagination, see them in a false mirror.
Demagogues may howl, fanatics rave, and madmen
rush to battle amid the delusive cries of freedom, still
the negro, bond or free, who feels his own intuitions,
will serve a superior, no matter what may be his polit
ical relation ; he will black the white man's boots, drive
his coach, and wait on his table. He knows his own sec
ondary nature, and, uninfluenced by persuasions, will
drop into his African mode of association ; he will have
a master to take from him life's imposing cares. He
can then sing, and dance, and chatter, regardless of
what is, or is to be, and, as a consequence, live out his
own life, in accordance with his own nature. If he parts
with his native freeedom, he also parts with his native
burden — that labor of mind which most enslaves him.
In this tendency of his nature, to surrender his liberty
with his cares, he differs widely from the Caucasian ;
and yet is not without a very imposing parallel in one
half of our species. We are males and females. To

42 Opposite Intuitions.
the former belongs the desire of dominion; but it is not,
in the same degree, an intuition of the latter. Our
women freely waive all claims to political liberty ; and
even legal rights they cast on the shoulders of their
husbands. But are they, in consequence, reduced to
slavery ? We think not ; for to them, the political
rights which they waive, and the legal rights which they
surrender, are imposed burdens. They instinctively re
ject them, and by so doing .acquire or accept a posi
tion which is more congenial to their natures — a po
sition in society in which they are relieved of these
oppressions. Thus their social freedom is obtained by
the surrender of those very rights which alone make
the male a freeman.
The free-lover, who is always a woman's-rights man
and an abolitionist, opens the door of suffrage alike to
all sexes, kinds and colors, and because of the sur
render of rights which attend the marriage relation,
holds, that if the negro is enslaved by surrendering his
liberties with his cares to a master, the wife is none the
less a slave who makes the same surrender to a husband.
He argues logically, and, upon the hypothesis which
lies at the basis of the abolition philosophy — universal
equality and similarity of natures — his conclusions are
incontrovertible. But herein are his errors. Human
beings are not equals, nor are they alike in their
natures ; but, on the contrary, proclivities are in many
particulars directly opposite in both races and sexes.
The one's desire for protection harmonizes and unites
with the other's love of dominion. Thus, though native
liberties be surrendered in the constitution of society,
all are freest when in the places for which nature de
signed them. It is only when our positions bear upon

• Liberty. 43
our natures, that we feel our social* burdens ; conse
quently, the man is freest, as well as happiest, when his
nature aud his condition harmonize with each other. .

CHAPTER VI.

Civil Liberty. — When Negroes are Free. — When they Degenerate. —
English, American and Negro Liberty.
False notions of slavery and liberty have taken pos
session of the public mind, so that those who prate most
about liberty know least of its real character, and as a
consequence confound all its conditions in a common
mass. From this disorder the nation's mind must be
relieved before the country can again return to real
tranquility and repose.
No man is entirely free, but on the contrary, all.
are dependent and oppressed.. They are oppressed by
nature, from which condition they flee to a state of
society, and thereby acquire civil liberty ; the only true
liberty which the author of our being has vouchsafed to
man. Natural liberty, that condition which a man may be
considered to occupy outside of society, is of all con
ditions the most oppressive ; for as man is a being of
many wants,- which he is of himself unable to supply,
nature becomes his greatest oppressor. But when he
enters society, and becomes assisted by those whom he
in turn assists, he then escapes from nature's burdens,
and becomes comparatively free. But as he retreats
from the burdens of nature to a condition of civil liber
ty, he must retreat until he finds a point at which his

44 Civil Liberty.
own nature is easy ; or rather, as the human mind is
never entirely satisfied, to a point at which it is easiest,
Thus civil liberty, which is defined to be " Natural lib
erty, so far restrained, and no further, than is essential
for the pnblic good," is to be ascertained, not by any
general rule, but by the nature of the being whose sta
tus is to be determined.
The white man who crowns the world of animated
nature ; who is far-seeing and self-reliant, requires a
condition in society which must, at least, make him
the custodian of his own person. But it is not so with the
negro ; he is non-self-reliant, is oppressed by cares, and
cannot, as the white man can, battle with nature's op
pressions ; consequently, he must retreat a step further
from natural liberty to find his appropriate civil status.
As he retreats he surrenders his person with his cares,
and becomes another's property. But that he thereby
sinks, as does the white man under the same relation,
to a level below the requisitions of his nature, is a propo
sition which the whole negro world disproves. He simply
retreats from nature's burdens to a point at which, under
another's shelter, he finds his own standard of civil
liberty. He then, and not till then, becomes happy,
multiplies with the greatest rapidity, and lives to the
greatest old age. This is proved by every page of the
negro's history in America.
Weights are no burdens when they operate as our
supporters. Every ordinary sized man is ascertained to
bear a weight of thirteen or fourteen tons of atmos
pheric pressure; yet this weight, which as ordinary
freight would crush us to atoms, as atmosphere is essen
tial to our support; so too, as a general rule, is the
master to the negro.

Civil Liberty. 45
Some English words, when ' applied to beings of oppo
site natures, vary their signification. The word slavery
belongs to this class. To the white man it implies the
opposite of freedom ; but to the negro it merely implies
a condition — a condition of owner and owned, in which
only the negro is enabled to be free — freed from nature's
burdens so that he can be socially happy. The white
man cannot live out his own nature and be owned by
another ; the negro cannot live out his, unless he is
owned. Thus are they opposite in their natures," and in
this opposition is slavery one's oppression and the other's
freedom. In entering society, the negro surrenders his natural
liberty to a master who gives back so much as he deems
proper for the good of his property. This is the negro's
slavery; and is the condition of which all abolitionists
complain. But wherein does the negro thus conditioned
differ, theoretically, from a subject of the British crown.
By the theory of Britain's government, all rights are
assumed to have been originally surrendered to the
monarch ; who, in turn, gave back such privileges as
were deemed proper for the general good. The analogy
of condition between the Englishman and, the slave, it
will therefore be seen, is much closer than Englishmen
may possibly like to admit. It is so close, that a fluent
abolitionist can as effectually prove, from admitted theo
ries, that Englishmen are slaves, as an Englishman can
prove that slavery exists in any of the states of Amer
ica. We do not, of course, pretend to say that English
men are slaves. But we present the analogy to shew
how easy it is for men of ingenuity to misrepresent any
institution that humanity is capable of inventing.
A well fed negro shows his keeping as effectually as

46 Freed Negroes Decline.
does a well kept horse. He grows round and plump,
his color brightens, and his skin, sleek and glossy, glis
tens in the sun. But a free negro — that is, one cast
upon the world without an owner, which in reality is
the opposite of freedom, soon, (unless specially favored,)
shows marks of trouble and neglect. He loses his gloss,
becomes dull in color, and, as the statistics of our country
show, gradually passes into decline. The Eastern and
Middle States have but barely kept up their numbers of
negroes, notwithstanding they have been constantly re
inforced by fugitives and manumitted slaves from the
country south of Mason and Dixon's line. Connecti
cut, for instance, had 7, 844 negroes in 1820 ; 8, 047 in
1830, 8,105 in 1840, and 7,693 in 1850. Some other
States make a better, and others a more unfavorable,
return ; but all go to show that negroes do not multiply
when relieved from the custody of an overseer. These
facts not only bear on the question of negro liberty, but
show the being to be nearer related than the white man
to animals of the inferior kind. The Caucasian may
show in his countenance the marks of care, but it is not
the abundance of food which fattens him ; nor does he
diminish when left to his own protection.
¦ A circumstance connected with our own individual
history, will throw much light on this subject. We
were raised, until about nineteen years of age, in an in
terior town of Pennsylvania. Among its inhabitants
were about thirty negroes, all of whom — as boys al
ways know the negroes — were known to us. In 1834
we emigrated westward, and in twenty years afterwards
returned to the home of our childhood, and inquired for
our negro acquaintances. But to our surprise— but at
what would not surprise us now — could learn of but one

Freed Negroes Decline. 47
solitary person then remaining in the land of the living.
Some, however, were reported to have left for parts
unknown, but the great majority were known to have
died; and, what is equally worthy of notice, to have
died without leaving a single descendant to represent
them above the turf that inclosed their remains. Why
did they thus disappear, if the condition which the
emancipation laws of Pennsylvania had given them,
was congenial to their natures ? The instance, it is true,
is but a minor one, but it is the world in miniature.
Every old man of the Eastern and Middle States can
tell a similar story of the emancipated negroes. Why,
then, shall white men be slaughtered, and a country
made desolate to force negroes into a condition which
hurries them out of being ? Let the mad and wicked
politicians who are now crying havoc, and are hurrying
our young men to destruction, answer this imposing
question. The war is not for liberty, nor can it be, for a
negro's liberty is that which he enjoys under a master,
as an Englishman's liberty is that which he enjoys under
the crown ; or as an American's is, that which he enjoys
under the constitution of his country.

CHAPTER VII.
The Nation Bewildered. — MIND Judges Itself. — Works Evidence op
Disorder. — Men Feel Impressions. — Rappings in Europe and New
England. — Witch Burning. — Missionary Enterprises. — Catholic Em
igration. — Church Contentions. — Pulpit Politicians. — The Mind
Seen. — The North Agitated, the South Tranquil. — Why South As
sailed.  Bad Faith of Politicians.— Rights in Territories Adju
dicated. — Chicago Convention. — Revolutionary Appeal. — Disunion
•Forced. — Demons Rejoice.
Ignorance may excuse many follies, and a false con-

48 National Madness.
ception of liberty may account for many of the crimes
which, as said by Madam Roland, are committed in lib
erty's name. • But when a nation rushes wildly on to its
own ruin, there is necessarily something more than ig
norance impelling it to action. Ignorance is, of course,
blind to consequences, but its tendency is to ease rather
than to execution. Ignorant men may be led by others ;
but demons distemper thought, inflame the mind, and
through mental delusions impel men to their own de
struction. An ignorance of Southern resources may have in
duced Northern abolitionists to believe that they could
conquer six millions of Southern people in sixty or nine
ty days, and by blockading their coasts, could starve
them into subjection in even less than half that time.
The same cause may have operated in various other
ways. It may have induced six hundred thousand vol
unteers to believe that an enlistment in the federal ar
my was but a permit to a pleasure excursion into
the Southern States, at the public expense, from which
they would all return in sixty or ninety days, with lau
rels which would secure them offices for all the rest
of their lives. But ignorance is not its own creator.
It was not ignorance which stupified the mind in re
gard to realities, and inflamed it in support of absurd
ities, or fired it with a desire for war. There was some
thing more than ignorance acting a part in the produc
tion of all these things. It may be unseen, but had it
not existed, men of sobriety would not have been crushed
by the infuriated mob.
The nation was mad, and so still remains, although
iLs symptoms or developments have changed from pomp
and bluster to the stern realities of sanguinary war.

Causes seen in Effects. 49
But how shall we prove to the distempered mind that
it is itself the subject of a disorder ? It must judge of
itself by itself ; and as it is its own standard of perfec
tion, its imperfections in other's eyes are perfections in
its own. It cannot see itself as others see it. But all
the American people have not drank to the same full
ness, or wandered on the same shores, and as a con
sequence, are not alike enveloped in the same fogs.
Some are still within the pale of reason, and from their
stand-point may see in works the result of causes.
Works are effects, and when confused show disorder
in the causes which produce them. By this rule, then,
let the nation be measured. Was it sane, when it
rushed to battle with the expectation of concluding its
labors in sixty or ninety days ? Or when it supposed
that an agricultural country could be starved into sub
jection by a blockade ? But to turn from its collective
to its administrative character : has it made a move
which has not been a blunder ? Look over the whole
field of war from the issue of the first war proclama
tion to Hooker's retreat across the Rappahannock, the
time of these writings, and tell me, if you can, wherein
it has displayed any thing like sound and commanding
reason. The nation is unquestionably mad. But from whence
do her disorders originate ? We have already traced
them to spiritual, fountains, but have not fully con
nected them with the progress of events.
Spiritual influences are the vitalizing powers of all
religions. Men feel them, and so declare themselves
when detailing their experiences. But influences differ,.
and powers operate in a multiplicity of ways. The
rappings do not seem to have been very common, or at

50 The Churches.
least not much observed until a very recent period ;
although Methodism seems to have arisen directly out
of them, for Wesley had them in his own house in
Europe. New England now has them in the greatest
abundance, which, no doubt, indicates the presence of
causes which have given her the largest share of the
nation's distemper. But while a spiritualistic character
seems to have commenced with her settlement — prob
ably was imported with her people — its practical phase
seems to have changed with times. At one period, we
find her burning witches, at another, hanging Quakers ;
and now, when she claims a higher development of civil
ization, we find her rallying all her forces to murder six
millions of white people because she discovers them to
be the owners of negro slaves. These things show a
tendency to spiritual distempers, or that fanaticism is
natural to the Yankee mind.
The war of the Revolution, and of eighteen hundred
and twelve, so impoverished the country, and so fixed
the minds of men, as to prevent the occurrence of any
important changes for a long period of time. But
about thirty or forty years ago, a spiritual influence
was found to move the public mind. Church revivals
became common,, and a spirit of missionary enterprise
was found to move over the entire country. The sects
with a common impulse entered the struggle, and vied
with each other for the increase of their respective de
nominations, and, as their numbers grew, each sect re
solved on civilizing all the world but itself, which was,
of course, too near perfection to admit of any very bene
ficial change. But while in the full flow of their enter
prises, a tide of Catholic immigration was found to be
setting in from Europe, and to be so fixed in its obsti-

Catholic Immigration. 51
nacy as actually to dispute with our native sects, of forty
or fifty different shades and colors, the palm of Christian
refinement and supremacy. This was a very unwel
come intrusion ; so much so, that the sects rose to com
bat it ; and, as fear magnifies all the objects which it
looks upon, they soon saw, in the inflowing tide, a
monster portentous of countless evils. The Catholics,
though but one tenth of our population, were assumed
to be designing the nation's conquest, and even the
Pope to be preparing to quit Europe, and to fix his see
in some one of our American cities, either New York,
St. Louis, or Cincinnati. As a consequence of this sud
den check to our missionary speculations, our sectarian
sympathies for the " deluded Catholics," (all of whom
were to be reformed and furnished with new bibles)
suddenly changed to deep and bitter hate.
Sectarian feuds had, we are aware, long before exist
ed, and Catholics and Protestants had warred for cen
turies before, in Europe. But here arose a new state of
things in America. Probably the revolutionary war,
in which all parties united for a common defence, may
have, for a time, extinguished ancient fires ; but here
they began again to break through their coverings.
This was a spiritual movement, and was so felt and un
derstood by its actors. Many people had -dreams, and
visions, and impressions, and were otherwise supported
in their opinions. The Methodist felt the power in his
heart ; the Quaker, in his conscience ; the Baptist, in
his soul ; and the Catholic felt the hand of the Im
maculate Virgin as a prop to his time-honored faith.
Thus all were spiritually supported ; and as each was
contending for the special custody of the same Divin
ity—for the babe found wrapped in the swaddling

52 Clerical Politicians.
cloth lying in the manger — each was alike zealous in
his pursuit ; and as he knew from his own feelings that
his own theory was divine, he knew by the same author
ity that his opponents were actuated by an influence
proceding from the opposite extreme of spiritual exist
ences. But the storm raged for a time only in the churches,
where, had it continued, the country would have suffered
but little from its ravages. But it could not be so re
stricted, for new causes added to old ones extended the
sphere of contest. It was discovered that the immigra
ting catholics affiliated politically with the party known
as democratic. This gave a new ground of fearful ap
prehension, and accordingly the clergy of the pro'testant
sects (subject however to many honorable exceptions,)
became undisguised pulpit politicians, and as such waged
war against the party with whom the Catholics were found
to act in the disposition of their suffrages. Thus the
pulpit became a rostrum, the church a forum, and the
clergy an active arm of party power.
Political rights in this country are, of course, equal ;
so that all persons, in orders or out of them, are alike
entitled to a participation in the affairs of state. But
when the cause of this rush of the clergy to the political
forum is understood, it will be found to be a demoniac
influence acting on their minds, and using them as
instruments in the work of poisoning .their congregations.
They got the war which they desired; thus their
prayers, in this particular, were affirmatively answered.
But their prayers for success have been much less re
spected. Why is this so ? Many causes may have op
erated ; but within the range of these discourses, it may
be noticed, that while men are in continual disguise to

Clerical Politicians. 53
each other, they are not so to the spirit world, for spirit
eyes see the minds of men as natural eyes see material
things ; consequently, prayers we understand to be
measured, not by the sounds which pass the teeth, but
by the condition of the soul from which they emanate.
The conflict incident to the Catholic immigration and
the Protestant opposition was general, wherever the
causes operated; but circumstances made it local and
not national. It was confined to the localities into which
the immigration flowed ; and as this was northern, the
conflict was confined to the northern section of the re
public. The southern states were uninfluenced by it,
and, as a consequence, remained spiritually tranquil,
while the north surged like a troubled sea.
Magnetism, as before noticed, is produced by the ac
tion of the human brain ; and as each organ produces
its kind, the organs most active produce most; con
sequently the excitement of evil passions generates evil
emanations, and as spirits approach men through
magnetism in harmony with their own, evil pro
ductions necessarily admit of evil approaches : thus
as the contentions of churches engendered a spirit bf
hatred, they engendered a corresponding magnetism
through which demons entered and acquired control,
not only of the clergy, but of congregations. This is
one process through which churches became demon-
ized ; but the avarice, cupidity and deception of their
people are no less operative in producing like effects.
The northern clergy, having clothed themselves in
political armor to war with the Papal power, (as their
disturbed imaginations fancied it protruding through the
political action of the country,) soon saw that a majority
of the southern people also voted with the northern

54 Slavery Assailed.
democracy, and thus indirectly became an ally of what
they conceived to be a power fraught with countless dan
gers. This in their imagination brought a new Richmond
into the field, and, as he was deemed more vulnerable
than his associate supporters, all fires were turned upon
him, but more particularly on what was assumed to
be hi-s most vulnerable point. The south held slaves,
whicn, as an institution, the stupid and the vicious mag
nified into an evil, and the fanatic into a crime; thus
the distemper, pent up in the northern mind, found
an object on which to vent its fury. The pulpit, the
press, and the forum thundered with denunciations ; and
as the thoughtless bent before their clamors, the design
ing actors took new courage from their successes. State
comity sunk before the storm, and agreements to desist
from the agitation of an inflaming subject were regarded
no longer than convenience required their observance-
Men could agree as whigs, and then, by changing their
names to republicans or something else, could absolve
themselves from all obligations. With such faith, peace
and unity hung on slender threads. The submission to
the federal court of the question involving the rights
of the citizen in the territories was no more respected
than the prior agreements not to agitate the disturbing
question ; for the demented mind was unable to appreci
ate the force of its obligations.
When the court had decided, its action should have
been respected, and no doubt would have been by a less
distempered people. The government, said the court,
was made by white men, for themselves and their pos
terity ; and, as a consequence, none others are citizens.
It is also, continued that tribunal, a government of lim
ited powers, having such powers and such only , as are

Dred Scott Decision. 55
given it by the instrument of its creation ; and among the
powers so given is the power to protect the citizen in
the enjoyment of his property; but not to take it from
him without giving him a compensation in damages.
This denied the right of Congress, or of a territorial leg
islature acting under it, to take from the citizen his
property, or in any way to change its status, no matter
whether it be slaves, mules or horses.
This decision may have been all wrong ; but while it re
mained the decision of the federal court, it was as much
a part of the constitution as if it had been written in the
original instrument, and, by a loyal people, would have
been so respected. But what was the action of these
very people who now claim superior excellence in loyalty ?
They met in convention at Chicago, and there resolved
to resist the constitution as thus adjudicated ; and in
order that they might be understood in the spirit of their
determinations, held their meetings in a "wigwam,"
passed their resolutions with a "war whoop," and with
a bowie knife eight feet long hanging over the head of
their speaker, as a war challenge to the chivalry of the
southern states. Blood had then already begun to flow.
Kansas had bled, and BrOwn had made his raid into
Virginia ; so that whatever was done may well be sup
posed to have been done with a reference to a future
collision of arms. Thus did those now pretended loyal
ists labor to drive the country into war. They resolved
(see their seventh resolution) that the construction given
by the court was a dangerous political heresy, revolu
tionary in its tendency, and subversive of the peace
and harmony of the country.
Why was it destructive of peace and harmony ? Would
it have disturbed their peace, had they not disturbed

56 Chicago Convention.
its ? Or is a government revolutionized when its courts
adjudicate upon its laws? Language, said a French
politician, was invented to disguise thought ; and from
him have the Chicago conventionists, as well as the mod
ern loyalists, taken their cues. The court had expounded
the constitution according to the rules of law ; with it,
these pretended loyalists were dissatisfied, and accord
ingly resolved to resist it ; therefore, their resolutions,
taken in their spirit, and stripped of their disguises,
are, that rather than have the constitution as it was,
they would disturb the peace of the country, and revolu
tionize the government of the nation.
But there was one point, and, if our memory is right,
one only in which they rejected deception. It was in
excluding the word national from the name of their
party. They were, said one of their speakers, a section
al party ; and because they were so, he scouted the idea
of appearing under a national disguise.
In their eighth resolution, they resolve, that the
normal condition of all the territory of the United States
is that of freedom, and that they will resist all attempts
to change it from that condition.
This is not only revolutionary, but lacks the lofty
daring with which its authors struck the word "nation
al " from the name of their party : for it is revolution
coupled with deception. It is revolutionary, because it
is an appeal to the masses to resist the adjudication of
the Court ; and deceptious, because it employs the word
" normal " in a deceitful sense. Unowned territory
may be normal, or uninfluenced by laws, but United States
territory is subject to the United States Constitution ;
and as that instrument is a positive law, the word " nor
mal," as used in the resolution, is a deception or a disguise

Chicago Convention. 57
The resolutions, the convention, and, in fact, the whole
movement of the party then acting, stripped of all dis
guise, is simply the defeated litigant saying to the suc
cessful party, you have gained the suit, the court has de
cided in your favor, but we are the strongest ; we have the
most money and the most men, and with them we will
reverse the decision and compel you to submit. This,
indorsed by the northern people, by the election of a
president pledged to support it, and unmodified by sub
sequent compromise, necessarily forced a dismember
ment of the Union. Demons then rejoiced, for as " mis
chief was then afloat," like Anthony, in the play of
Caesar, they could " let it work."

CHAPTER VIII.
The Infidel Immigration of 1848. — Their Attempt to Germanize
America. — Their Platform, Unity of Sectarians and Infidels. —
Nature, Super-Nature's Surface. — Man an Automaton. — Demons
Marshal their Forces. — Elements in The Chicago Convention. —
Invisible Power. — America Fallen.
Immigration brought catholics, but it also brought
protestants and infidels, and so transported European
animosities to America, where they mingled with disor
ders already existing. But of all the importations,
none have proved so prejudicial to the nation's peace and
harmony as the infidel immigration of the year eighteen
hundred and forty eight. The flood then poured in upon
us was a revolutionary element, fired with all the van
ities that ideal Germany was able to produce.
A body of visionary men, ambitious of renown,
had then, within the confines of Germany, mysteri-

58 The Germanic Infidels.
ously sprung into being, and swelling with con
ceptions of superior greatness, sought distinction, first
in the propagation of peculiar ideas, and then, as the
remoter ultimate, in the clash of arms. They rose
to military proportions in their own country, and there
made their first dash at imperial grandeur ; but institu
tions established by their own fathers, and adapted to
the obstinacy of the European character, interposed su
perior power, before which, broken and routed, they flew
from their native homes to find shelter under American
laws, and that liberty which they are now endeavoring
to restrain and deny to others. Humbled and subdued
they reached our shores, and, in that guise, found warm
hearts and open hands to receive them. But no sooner
were they warm in their new nests, than the spirit
which made them restless in Europe, made them rest
less here ; and as they regarded American opposition
as less formidable than that of Germany, their audacity
swelled to greater proportions.
They found themselves among a people whom they
regarded as much their inferiors in ability, whose insti
tutions they felt able to control, and so effect in this
country what they had failed to effect in their own.
They could, as they supposed, still make their mark in
the movement of nations, and, though driven into exile
from the scenes of their- nativity, still pass down on
the pages of history -as actors in the world's drama of
revolutions. Stimulated with such ideas, the shelter
which they received under American laws was no re
straint upon their ambition, nor was it even deemed a
subject worthy of respect; for; like our Indians when well
treated, they regarded the charity as a concession of
weakness in those who gave it, and an acknowledgment

The Germanic Infidels. 59
of their superior power and ability. By the laws of
the country which sheltered them a residence of at
least five years was essential to their admission as ac
tors within the political forum. But even this restraint
was irksome to them ; for their desires were less to be
come Americans than to make America German. Ac
cordingly, we find them, soon after their arrival, de
nouncing the institutions of the country, and loudly in
sisting on what they assumed to call govermental re
form. In all the northern cities we find them organiz
ing political associations, holding conventions, discuss
ing principles, and as a general feature of their actions,
presenting America as but secondary in importance to
" Te fater-land," from which they had so recently been
driven. At what particular period they commenced their or
ganizations we do not now precisely remember. But on
the 5th day of October, 1851, three years after their ar
rival in America, and two years before they could, by
any possibility, have been entitled to the rights of cit
izens, we find them, as appears by "The Hochwechter,"
of October 22, of the same year, in convention at Rich
mond, Virginia — as far south as they may have deemed
it prudent to venture — resolving upon a sweeping and
radical change of that Government, from which, like the
misletoe on the oak, they drew all the political vitality
on which they survived.
So assumptions and dictatorial are these resolutions
that, were they not still to be found in the papers of
the party which produced and adopted them, we could
scarcely now believe it possible for men in their con
ditions to be possessed of so much audacity. As prin
ciples of reform, these resolutions are vain and visionary,

60 German Platform.
and under this view are scarcely worth the labor of
reproduction ; but as they display a large share of the
imported idealities then working on the public mind,
we here give them at length, under a translation of a
gentleman whom we deem worthy and capable.
After commencing with a formal caption, they pro
ceed :
" The two great political parties of this country hav
ing proved their incapacity to develop the true prin-.
ciples of constitutional liberty, it becomes the duty of
this, the party of the future, though now small in num
bers, but strong in faith, to form a new political pro
gramme, and to enter upon the work of reform."
Appealing then to all radicals, they declare the follow
ing to be their platform of principles :
A. Internal Reform.
1. All persons, without distinction, to be allowed
the right of suffrage.
2. The election of all officers by the -people.
3. A discontinuance of the Presidency of the Uni
ted States.
4. A discontinuance of the two Houses of Legis
lation in both the federal and state governments.
5. The right of the people, at their pleasure, to re
call their representatives.
6. The people to decide all questions of constitution
al law.
7. Justice to be administered without pay.
8. A Department of Emigration to be established
in the federal government.
9. A reduction of the term of residence now re
quired for naturalization.

German Platform. 61
International Reform.
1. The abolition of all laws on the subject of neutral
ity. 2. Intervention in favor of all people struggling for
liberty. C. Religious Reform
1. Impartiality in the administration of personal and
religious liberty, viz: a. The abolition of all Sunday
laws. b. The abolition of the oath upon' the Bible.
c. The abolition of prayers in. congress, d. The abo
lition of all laws requiring a belief in God and immor
tality as a qualification for public office.
2. No exemption of church property from taxation.
3. No church property to be incorporated in the
name of official . dignitaries. D. Social Reform.
1. Land reform ; no Land monopolies.
2. A progressive property tax.
3. Improvement in the condition of the laboring
classes, viz : a. By reducing the working time to eight
hours per day for adults, and to five for children, b.
By the incorporation of working men's aid societies.
c. By giving the working man the first lien on the in
solvent's estate, d. By the erection of State asylums
for disabled laborers.
4. The education of all poor children at the public
expense. 5. All railroads to be purchased and held by the
government as public property.
6. School reform: a. All children to attend free

62 Foreign Elements.
schools, from which all religious influence shall be ex
cluded, b. Instruction in the German language, c.
The erection of a German University.
7. The system of Cassius M. Clay for the abolition
of slavery to be supported by congressional laws.
8. The abolition of all theological penalties.
9. The abolition of capital punishment.
Assumption may swell to excessive proportions,
and vanity be unlimited in its pretensions; but here
is an audacity for which the world has probably
never yet produced an equal. A body of refugees, de
pendent upon a nation's charity, assume the offensive,
denounce the people who have received them as incap
able of administering their own laws, and then resolve
to impose their own abstractions upon them !
The admission of a foreign element is at best a dan
gerous policy. Rome fell by admitting barbarians to
her legions ; Britain, by admitting the Saxons ; Ireland,
by admitting the English; and Egypt, by her Mam-
alukes. But the immigrants' to our country, with the
exception of this particular spawn, have endeavored to
conform to our polity, and become Americans. They
may all have had their partialities — incidents insepar
able to nativity — but none others have interposed an
tagonisms, or sought to evade a substantial confor
mation to our laws by endeavoring to make the institu
tions of the country bend to their peculiarities.
America felt the sting of the intrusion, and for a
time rose to resist it ; but she saw not the interior in
fluence which operated against her. There was a re
ligious madness within the country in harmony with
this very distemper, which the suppression of the Ger
manic rebellion had driven to this side of the Atlantic.

Unity of Elements. 63
Imported infidelity had its pulsations beating in unison
with puritanic and methodistical America; and although
there was an exterior conflict — an opposition of sectarian
creeds with avowed infidelity — still, underlying exteriors,
there was a unity of sects, orders, and divisions on com
mon objects, in which all were marshaled by the same
" Prince " in his contemplated war on humanity.
Minds restricted wholly to the plane of nature, we
are aware, may be unable to see this combination. But
how will they account for the political unity of the sects
and the infidels — for their common onslaught on Slav
ery — on the rights of the States — and for their com
mon thirst for human blood ? Or how will they account
for the excessive crop of foreign atheism, mysteriously
produced and as mysteriously cast upon America ?
Nature is sytper-naturd s surface, and is controlled by it,
so that man, in the material form, who lives in nature,
is but an automaton, moved and controlled by a power
which he neither sees nor comprehends.
Demons, who are in the world and around it, gath
ered upon the nation, controlled particular mentalities,
and, from a thousand presses and twenty thousand pul
pits, poured an unceasing fire into the sectarian mind,
until all were reduced to the common level of Germanic
infidelity. A uniformity then spread throughout the
length and breadth of the demented masses, while
the world's enemy, moving steadily to a purpose, mar
shaled his forces for humanity's destruction.
All divisions — believers and disbelievers, natives
and foreigners, spiritualists and materialists, sectar
ians and infidels-j-met in the Chicago Convention and
harmonized under their invisible commander. The
Germanic element rose to the surface, dictated its own

64 Demented Conditions.
terms, led in the nominations, blocked open the doors
of immigration, and secured an anti-American Pres
ident, who has since proved his loyalty to disloyalty by
sending men scarcely able to speak our language to rep
resent us in distant courts, and. by placing American
arms in the hands of foreign mercenaries with which to
murder American people.
Thus, through influences unseen and unappreciable
by the man of exterior perceptions, only have the United
States of America fallen from an attitude in which they
once commanded the admiration of the world to a
level at which they are no longer feared or respected.

CHAPTER IX.
Demented Conditions. — Light Breaks Through the War. — Masters arh
Soldiers. — Collision foreseen. — Efforts to Evade it. — Comparison of sys
tems. — Clerical Fury; Wide-awakes; Lincoln's Designs. — nis Soliloquy
of "No-body Hurt." — Party Against Union. — Compromise Rejected. —
Chandler's Reason. — The " First Gun." — Deception Triumphs. — All Par
ties Infected. — The National Raid. — Congressional Resolutions.
The demented condition of the war portion of the
northern people is now apparent to all the world except
to those who are within its combinations. All Europe
sees it, the south sees it, and, as delusion flees before the
fiery ordeal of battle, light breaks through the thick
darkness which has hitherto overspread the northern
mind. Europe, it is true, was slow to perception, for she, too,
was within the folds of the abolition distemper. But
standing aloof, above the fire and smoke which envel
oped the belligerent sections, she saw through clearer

American Valor. 65
skies, and, as a consequence, soon found her own delu
sions rapidly dissipating before the dissolving power of
a gigantic and eventful struggle. Her associations had
been with vthe northern section. Her people had em
igrated to it, and sent back glowing accounts of northern
superiority and southern weakness. But when she heard
the deep thunders pealing through the thick clouds of
war, and saw the true American fire rolling from south
ern steel,. deception fled as mists before the sun, and she
awoke to a realization of the momentous fact in the
constitution of nations, that negro slavery, instead of ef
feminating the Caucasian, makes him the giant of the
world. We cannot disguise the fact, however much editors
and reporters may labor to lie us into victories, that
the glory of this war, as a war of sections, is all against
us. But in point of nationality and American charac
ter, it is — and will so appear in the future — the glory
of America over a combination of hell-directed factions.
The true northern heart is not in the war; besides^
our young men, with their lives, have proved their
valor, and, though crushed with the weight of demon-
ized authority, have sustained the nation's claim — not
to wisdom, it is true, for that was not within their pro
vince, but to unmistakable bravery.
Our men are now, as they have ever been, noble and
daring ; but no army of thirty or forty per cent, of for
eign birth is equal in war to one whose elements are
wholly American. A Dutch regiment could fire the
county, and murder the old men and half grown boys
for ten miles around the scene of Col. McCook's assas
sination, and a whole brigade could ravish a town of
helpless American women and children, while their

66 Phrenological Developments.
Dutch commander closed his eyes on their brutality for
a fixed number of hours ; but when they met the native
troops at Chancellorsville, they recoiled from the shock,
and with the swiftness of terror reaffirmed their claims
to their world-wide distinction of " Flying Dutchmen."
They could murder the helpless, but could not hold a
point, for a single moment, against the fiery dash of
American men in battle.
Our native youth have every where maintained their
native valor. But still the problem of Greek and
Roman solution, that " No men are equal in battle to
those whose education has made them masters," may
be reaffirmed, after twenty, centuries of slumber, in
the war that now tries our native as well as Euro
pean mettle. But if it is, it will be our own solution,
for the benefit of our own future ; and, as a consequence,
when polity is made to conform to nature, add to,
rather than take from our national glory.
The human mind develops in accordance with its em
ployments ; consequently, as firmness and perception
¦are requisite properties alike of the soldier and the mas
ter, the man in civil life as well as in the tented field,
may be prepared for the ordeal of battle. This was
¦once a problem wavering in speculation ; but it is no
longer subject to such vacillation. Modern science has
supplied the deficit, and shown the mind in physical
proportions. The northern head, in many particulars,
¦has its superiorities ; but in the southern head, firmness
and perception are much better developed. This is the
result of employment ; for the master must be both
firm and watchful. Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster, late of
the United States Senate, may be regarded as types of
their respective sections. In the . latter, causality and

War Foreseen. 67'
most of the organs pertaining to commercial life are
highly developed ; but in the former, firmness and per
ception are far more prominent ; so that while Webster
was probably greatest in general powers of mind, Clay
would have been much his superior, either as a gen
eral or as a private soldier, on the field of battle.
All the great American Generals, Washington, the two
Jacksons, Scott, Lee, and many others, are of slave-hold
ing education ; so that in this fact alone, the problem of
masters being superior as warriors receives at least a
half-way solution. But let us return from this digres
sion. For years before the clash of battle, men of all sec
tions saw the growing disorder in the northern mind,
but they could neither appease nor restrain it, for it was
a wildness against which reason was of no avail. The
northern man of sobriety was powerless in his appeals,
for all his efforts were construed into a servile submis
sion to the southern lash ; while on the other hand,
southern men who implored the distempered faction not
to drive them to the wall, were assumed to be actuated
only by a conscious weakness, and a fear of northern
arms. Still, many southern men, as well as many
northern ones, labored to the last to avert the shock of
war. They clung to the constitution which their fathers
and ours had constructed and passed down to us on the
stream of time for our mutual shelter and support.
But while they clung, they saw the thick clouds of war
gathering around them, and heard the thunders break
ing through the northern sky. The whole heavens were
full of fire, pealing with incessant denunciations of south
ern life ; and amid the sounds, ungrateful to every pat-
riotic ear, they heard that very constitution which had

68 Comparison of Systems.
borne our fathers through many a stormy sea, denounced
as "a covenant with death, and, a league with hell."
The south was pronounced immoral, and a burden upon
the nation, drawing succor for which she gave no re
turn. Even the hay crop of the north was assumed to
be of more value than all that the southern states pro
duced. Thus step by step was animosity kindled, till
the Union, like the body of old age, became a burden
to its wearers.
But hope, though flickering, was not extinguished.
Men looked for better days, and, to determine the truth
or falsity of the abolition clamor against slavery,
turned to a comparative examination of the northern
and southern systems. They found much of the north
ern population congregated in large cities, while south
ern population was more inclined to be ruraL North
ern men were found to be money-serving and to count
by dollars; while southern men counted their wealth
by negroes, and made their homes on plantations where
their property was found to be most valuable. Rural
life they found to be more virtuous than municipal;
and, as a consequence, that crime congregated most in
the northern states. In the city of New York alone
they found no less than twelve thousand abandoned
women, and a corresponding number to population in
most, if not all, the other cities.. Turning then .to
the subject of adjudicated offences, they found all the
penitentiaries north of Mason and Dixon's line, crammed
from their cellars to their garrets, with convicted fel
ons, and every state enlarging, or preparing to en
large, its prison accommodations ; and negroes they
found happiest and best conditioned when white men
owned them as property. Thus the balance was decid-

General Disorder. 69
edly in favor of the southern system. But the dis
tempered mind could not, or would not, see this array
of facts against it. The country heaved with corrup
tion; while, in almost every alternate square, in every
town and city, there arose a steeple, under which men
and women assembled, at least twice a week, to im
plore their God for vengeance on the supporters of
the southern system of govermental association. The
clergy, particularly, beat themselves into fury ; and,
with money collected from their congregations, sent
forth Sharp's rifles and Colt's revolvers to aid in the
civil war which they and their equally demonized par-
tizans had engendered in Kansas. They were self-
righteous as well as self-sufficient, and accordingly saw
the mote in their brother's eye, but could not see the
beams which clustered in their own.
As descending bodies increase their velocity with
the distance through which they pass, so was the
nation dashing wildly on to its . ruin. Knavery be
came policy, truth became vulgar, and a singleness of
purpose sunk far below the level of political, and, in
most cases, religious life. The youth were taught the
demoniac principle of hate — to hate their neighbors ;
and in this and various other ways prepared for the
gathering storm. An organization into semi-military
companies of "Wide-awakes" was but a half way step
to the accumulation of regiments, divisions, and mas
sive armies. Demons worked upon the minds of men,
and, from their interior abodes, heaved the country's
mentality onwards to national ruin.
Mr. Lincoln, who sprang mysteriously from the prai
ries to the presidency, had no sooner been elected than he
began to exhibit signs of a demented condition. He saw

70 Party against Union.
the nation fast tumbling to pieces ; but his prejudices were
fixed to a purpose ; and as a consequence, instead of pro
ceeding immediately to Washington, and there endeav
oring to prop the falling members of the Union, he lis
tened to the councils of his equally demonized support
ers, and with them designed the policy of driving the
southern states to the wall. He looked not to his coun
try, but to his party ; and in the throes of a dis
turbed conscience, found consolation in the vulgar so
liloquy of " No-body hurt." No-body, it is true, was
then hurt ; nor were they hurt at Bull's Run, at Wil
liamsburg, at Richmond, at South Mountain, at Antie-
tam, at Fredericksburg, at Springfield, at Pea Ridge, at
Murfreesborough, at* Chancellorsville, at Vicksburg, or
any other of the hundred battles in which American soil
has drank American blood, until armies were marched
there to be hurt. It was a cruel vanity for official conso
lation ; cruelly indulged, but now sorrowfully answered,
with the blood of half a million of men, and the tears
of thrice that number of widowed wives and fatherless
children. Men who say one thing and do another may very
reasonably expect a similar disposition to exist in others ;
therefore the demonized faction may have supposed
the avowed determination of the southern people to re
sist the growing aggression upon their rights to be but
a mere party ruse, such as they themselves would have
resorted to. But whatever may have been their antici
pations, conceptions, or designs, they had, by their Chi
cago platform, as well as by their party action for ten
long years, assumed a position, from which to recede
involved the certainty of party ruin. They had ap
pealed from the adjudication of the courts to the su-

Party against Union. 71
premacy of the great northern mob, and by it had been
sustained and lifted to national power ; therefore was
their party spirit arrayed against the peace, the
unity, and, in all probability, the perpetuity of the
republic. The south stood upon the constitution as it had been
solemnly adjudicated, and under the s,tripes and stars
which waved above it claimed the right of .entering the
territories with their slave property while the territo
rial condition lasted. But the assailing party stood on
the Chicago platform, and the superiority of northern
numbers ; thus the issue was made up ; and to recede
in the one instance was to surrender constitutional
liberty; in the other, to lose the supremacy of party
power ; consequently party stood, not for, but against,
the Union.
When the presidential vote was cast, declaring the
supremacy of a section, and the aggressive policy of the
Chicago platform, it was barely possible to heal the
wounds which had then been inflicted. They were deep
and angry ; still, had a compromise been presented to
the voting millions, as they desired it to be, the evil day
might have been avoided, and the United States still be
a happy and prosperous, as. well as a great and mighty
nation. But compromise would have destroyed the re
publican party ; therefore did its politicians in congress
thrust themselves between the ballot-box and the people,
— take from sovereignty its sovereign power, and, by
their usurpations, drive the country into civil war.
By a trick, it is true, the South was made to fire the
first gun, which circumstance, like Caesar's body to the
populace, was made the subject of wild and deceitful
clamors ; and, as if desigrfed by interior powers, opened

72 All Parties Distempered.
a scuttle through which knavery, as well as madness,
found a channel to flow.
The vain, the vicious, and the needy saw their pros
pects brighten in a change from peace to war; the
thoughtless with unsuspecting youth and childhood
moved with the general current ; while the pent up de
sire for blood and plunder — the deep trance of demo
niac impregnations — heaved the distempered mind, and
bursting from its confines, overspread the nation with
the fiery torrent which is now sweeping it down to ir
retrievable ruin. The conclaves of darkness then re
joiced ; for deception had triumphed over truth ; they
had forced war upon the country, and in its inaug
uration had secured the vantage ground of having com
pelled the south to fire the first gun. The vicious of
all parties now found an apology for their excesses ; for
the demoniac influence had made its way into all polit
ical as well as into all church associations. More than
half the democratic partizans had imbibed the distem
per, and accordingly rushed with all others to the war ;
and as the chances of victory were measured by the
numerical forces of the sections, cowards leaped forth
with more anxiety than men of genuine courage. Big
boys who impose on little ones are always cowards ; so
too are men who force upon a people the necessity of
war because they have superior numbers. The south,
it is true, fired the first gun in the great drama which
opened with the bombardment of Fort Sumter ; but
Kansas had then bled for years, and John Brown had
made his raid into Virginia. The north, too, had then
assumed a sectional character, had seized upon the
reins of government in a spirit of hostility to the
southern states, and was at that very moment send-

Who began the War. 73
ing ships of war into Carolina waters : thus the act
was but the continuation of the old drama — the Brown
raid in national proportions.
The storm had been gathering for many years ; the
Chicago platform, through a president pledged to its
support, had superceded the constitution ; all overtures
of compromise had been rejected; the peace conven
tion — called at the instance of Virginia (the mother of
•presidents) had been spit upon, and for the reason
given by Senator Chandler, who speaks the sentiments
of his party, namely : that " The Union without blood
is not worth a cuss."
With these facts clear and prominent before it, a
vicious congress may resolve that the war exists by
act of the southern people, but no number of resolu
tions, though heaped to the skies, will remove the mon
uments of truth which now rise on the broad pages of
American history. Truth may be crushed, but " Though
crushed to earth, it will rise again." And when it rises
in this case, it will rise in judgment against a body of
politicians who, by resolutions, sought to lie it out of
existence. The issues were made in the preceding con
flicts, and to them men were riveted by interior con
ditions. Section was arrayed against section, and to
secure power in the dominant faction, these issues
involved the necessity of war — a collision rather than a
retreat from assumed positions ; for to recede was to
fall. This ambition could not endure; therefore, as
loyalty to party rose above loyalty to country, these
very men, who sought by resolution to shuffle off re
sponsibility, designedly forced the nation into war.
They could have avoided both disunion and conflict by
referring the questions back to the people, for then there

74 General Madness.
was a halt in the public mind. Men recoiled from
the abyss which opened before them ; but for those to
falter who had just gained position was to fall from
power. Here lay the secret spring of action which
caused the collision of arms.

CHAPTER X.
Delusion at the Commencement of the War. — Northern Interests. —
Exports. — Agricultural Exports of 1859. — Interchange of Commod
ities. — Bread and Cotton Have both United in Exportations. —
French and English Madness. — They Abolish Slavery. — It Forces
them into American Markets. — Cotton Brings Gold, and Gold
Immigration, and Both Flow North. — Cause of Western Growth. —
Western Interests. — Effect of Peaceable Separation. — -Vice and
Vanity of the Extermination Policy. — The War Ruinous even in
Success. — Taxable Property. — National Debt — Gold in the Country.
— Demoralization. — Free Negroes. — Our Future Prospects.
No man ever saw a people more deluded than were
the great majority of the people of the northern states
at the commencement of this war. History had proved
the superior hardihood of' northern soldiers, and asN
the division of sections rallied twenty millions of peo
ple against five or six, he was deemed a lunatic who
even thought of any thing less than the complete and
uninterrupted success of the northern arms. We had
(in the general contemplation of the people) every
thing against nothing. We had the government, and
the army and the navy, and European soldiers or mer
cenaries, in abundance. We had Dutch, and English,
and Irish, and French, and Scotch, and Hungarians,
and Italians. We had arms, and money, and credit,
had all the machinery of modern warfare, with soldiers
by the million, to hurl upon our unarmed and unpre-

Party against Union. 75
pared countrymen. All power of numbers and re
sources was with us ; and, as the God of battles was
then known (in the contemplation of our madmen)
to be on the side of the strongest battalions, the man
was in danger of incarceration who was known to
harbor for a moment a thought of even a possibil
ity of a northern army being for an instant checked
in its gigantic strides to glory. Sixty days, or ninety
at the utmost, with fire, and sword, and starvation, was
to close the war, and scatter the southern armies in
confusion to the mountains.
Why were the people thus deceived, if they were not
under some mental disorder ? They had the statistics
of the country before, them, were able to read and under
stand them, and by the experience of three wars knew
of the extent of southern valor. Still, they could not
conceive it possible that a southern army would hold its
ground until a northern regiment approached within
even a day's journey of its intrenchments. So deep was
the delusion, that we actually saw a gentleman who
came from the country to this city, armed with a brace
of pistols, a horse blanket and his market-basket filled
with provisions, with which he offered his services to go
on and " wipe out " the whole rebellion. He was sure
of being able to do it all in less time than he would be
able to consume the contents of his hand basket full of
provisions. Amid the delusion which swept like a tornado over
us, all northern interests, save that of " wiping out the
south," was entirely over-looked or unheeded; for no
one who shouted for war thought of being himself
in any way endangered, or of his section being even re
motely liable to loss. But now, since the cloud has

76 National Growth.
partially burst, and its weight upon the nation been re
duced, let us look for a moment not only on probabilities,
but on results, against which no force can possibly protect
us. Take the question of material prosperity and na
tional growth, and see where the war must, of necessity,
land us.
A nation's prosperity is not to be measured by the
nation's productions only, for it may consume all that it
yields, and so end the year just where it began it ; or
it may consume more than it yields, and so end the
year in debt.
Mr. Helper summed up northern growth in hay, and
oats, and cprn, and cattle ; but did not see, or did not
wish to see, that when the cattle had eaten up the hay,
the oats, and the corn, and the people had eaten up
the cattle, there was nothing left to increase the wealth
of the nation. This rule may serve to deceive, but not
to enlighten a people.
We must look to the excess of production over and
above consumption for the sum of national, as well
as of individual, prosperity ; consequently, the exports-
of a nation give the most convincing data of a nation's
prosperous tendency. Take then this rule ; and, as we
are an agricultural people, at least with regard to for
eign nations, compare the agricultural exports of the
two sections now at war, and see how the destruction of
one section will affect the other.
The exports of any one year will elucidate the point
here in question. The year 1859, the year preceding
the election of the present administration, which broke
down the amity of northern and southern relations, will
serve as well as any other for the purpose.
The whole agricultural exports of that year amounted,

Agricultural Exports. 77
in round numbers, to the sum of $199,000,000 ; of this
$161,000,000 alone was cotton, and $21,000,000 tobacco,
leaving but $17,000,000 remaining for all the other agri
cultural exports put together. All the cotton was of
southern growth, and very nearly all the tobacco. So
nearly was the tobacco all southern, that by giving the
rice of the southern states, and the cereals and provi
sions of the border slave states to the north, we may
assume with propriety, for calculation, that all the tobac
co, as well as all the cotton, was of southern growth.
These two articles then united make the joint sum of
$182,000,000, which is so much southern exportation,
standing against the remaining $17,000,000, the whole
sum of northern agricultural exportations for the year.
This comparison shows a state of things which is
overwhelmingly in favor of southern prosperity ; and,
were all other things equal, would show a thriftiness in
the southern states which would have no parallel in the
northern ones. But while the southerners have brought
money into the country, the Yankees, like a nest of busy
sqirrels, have collected it into their own coffers. With
the aid of a tariff, they have kept out foreign manufac
tured articles, and so compelled the southern and west
ern people to buy their's at high and imposing prices.
In this way they acquired the greatest share of the
money returned from the exports of cotton, while they
cursed the south for the very means by which she
brought it to them.
• Could the south have held on to all which her pro
ductions brought into the country, she would now be
exorbitantly rich, and the north be comparatively poor.
But there is an internal commerce, and through it an
intermingling of commodities between the sections, which

78 Cotton brings Gold.
has distributed the receipts of southern productions
over all the nation, and so partially equalized advantages.
The southern planter found his labor most remunerative
in the production of cotton, consequently, he turned his
attention to its growth, and, by so doing, allowed the
northern farmer, and particularly the farmer of the
north-west, to raise his bread. In this way, as we of the
north, and particularly we of the north-west, fed the negro
while he labored in the production of southern growths,
our northern staples went into the bale of cotton, and
in that shape and character were exported to Europe,
from whence gold was returned to nourish northern as
well as southern fields. This is the secret of north
western growth — an intermingling of productions inci
dent to a diversity of soil and climate. But behind
this native division there lies a cause for the demand
that has been made on American markets for southern
staples, which is as much artificial as natural, and owes
its rise in a great measure to a madness in European
minds similar to that which now exists on this con
tinent. About thirty or forty years ago, the people of Eng
land and France, like our own fanatics of the present
time, went mad on the subject of liberty, and in their
delirium abolished slavery in all their Indian, African,
and American possessions. Their delusion seems to
have been but the forerunner of that madness which
now rages on the western continent. They saw men
but skin-deep; and, as a consequence, concluded that
a negro was merely a black white man, and therefore
oppressed when held as an item of property. They
were thousands of miles from the scenes of servitude, so
that their fancies had the widest conceivable sway, and

French and English Madness. 79
the loftiest possible assensions. Tower accordingly rose
on tower, in their imaginations, until they saw, in the
owners of slaves, giants far more formidable than those
which Don Quixote saw in his windmills. But their
cupidity in their final action became as much involved
as their distortions and mistaken philanthropy.
They rated all men, without regard to race, kind, or
color, by their own standard ; and, in the contemplation
of their own natures, concluded that one free negro
would perform as much labor as two bond ones ; con
sequently, they expected, by an emancipation, to not
only increase, but to double their tropical productions.
The idea was alluring, and on it the covetous as well
as the fanatical made the leap. But it was a leap from
whence there could be no return. The negroes were
freed, (if turning them loose without masters may be
termed freeing them,) but instead of their freedom in
creasing their energies, as would have been the case
with white men, they laid down in the shade, suffered
the soil, like themselves, to be freed, and, for the want
of care, to lapse into a state of nature.
The work of emancipation was done, but instead of
its increasing the productions of these various posses
sions, it extinguished their greatness ; for they dropped
off, until all Europe was. driven into American markets
for the fibrous tropical staple. In this way, European
madness gave succor to American prosperity, and so
built up our nation.
But other causes also aided which may have had their
rise in providential designs for the protection of negro
slavery. While England and France were thus running
wild in their abolition madness, various discoveries were
made in the art of working cotton. The flying shuttle,

80 Demand for Cotton.
the cotton-gin, and some other inventions or improve
ments were made, which increased the value of the
staple, and so induced greater efforts for its production.
All this added to American growth ; and as much to
northern as to southern localities. Tennessee had been
until then a greater producer of corn than Ohio, but
the cotton demand revolutionized her policy, and ac
cordingly she changed the cereal for the tropical plant,
and became a grower of cotton ; all of which widened
the market for northern staples. Every other local
ity responded in a similar way. Cotton was planted
wherever cotton would grow; and, as a consequence,
the north-west became the bread-producing region for
the cotton-growing portion of the entire nation.
France and England soon saw that they had de
stroyed their colonies; and, accordingly made every
possible effort to regain their lost positions. The latter
caught negroes on the coast of Africa and "apprenticed "
them out on her West India possessions. But the pol
icy did not meet expectations ; for the negro, who is a
slave by nature, could not be made a valuable producer,
without the care and attention of an owner. Estates
accordingly sank into delapidation ; and West India
fields, the richest of the world, grew up in brambles.
Under this condition, "a new ^dodge" was resorted to,
which has probably been more successful. It is the
" cooly system," or the introduction of people from
Asia to resuscitate, if possible, these fallen possessions.
But cooly labor is not a subject of these writings, and
will not therefore now be considered.
The demand for, and production of, American cotton
set a stream of gold to flowing across the Atlantic
ocean, from Europe to America, which, in its oper-

Slave Labor. 81
ations, forced out another stream, a stream of emi
gration, of people who came with the general tide, to
delve in the golden flood. They came in a common
pursuit — to better their conditions ; and, as their consti
tutions and habits were northern, they drifted, by force
of their own inclinations, to northern localities. But
as the internal commerce, and the mingling of produc
tions above noticed, spread the gold over northern as
well as over southern sections, they here headed the
stream, and cast their nets in the golden waters. They
grew rich and pompous ; acquired houses, and lands,
and flocks, and treasures. But many,, and particularly
the ideal German, grew dizzy with their abundance,
opened their ears to the effusions of demonized clergy
and visionary theorists, received the hell-directed mania,
and, as a consequence, like the puffed Yankee, cursed
negro slavery, while they fattened on its productions.
The great north-western country sprang, as by magic,
into importance. But it was slave labor which gave
the moving power. The golden stream which cotton
brought to America, was the enchanting force before
whieh forests sank, cities rose, and prairies sprang into
cultivated fields and gardens. The north-western far
mer found the best market in the world at his own door.
But let the south be destroyed, its fields laid waste, its
people slaughtered, and its negroes scattered, and what
will be the future of the great north-western country ?'
Will not population leave it faster than ever it came in ?
And will not our fields, now waving with golden har
vests, grow up in brambles; our cities decay ; and the
owl, in her solitude, build her nest in our loftiest
temples ? * Let north-western men reflect on these sug
gestions. We have grown with great rapidity ; but it

82 Effect of Peaceful Separation.
is much easier to destroy a country than it is to build
one up.
We may raise produce, but we can not live on bread
alone, we must have a commmerce to sustain our agri
culture, and when we have destroyed our southern mar
ket, where will we get another? We can not get it
in Europe, for the Baltic and the Black sea, in three
years out of four, can furnish bread-stuffs cheaper than
they can be furnished by America. Our middle states
can supply themselves ; which leaves New England
only within our own dominions to be furnished, whose
markets may be glutted by a single western state.
Where, then, is our future resort for that exchange of
commodities which can alone give us a sure aud perma
nent prosperity ?
It was a great error which drove the southern people
to secession ; but when we had driven them to that ex
treme, true policy required us to let them go in peace,
and to abide by the consequences ; and such would have
been the determination of the northern mind, had it not
labored under a distemper.
A peaceful separation would have left open a door for
(reunion, which would almost certainly have occurred at
the next presidential election. But if it had not, a po
litical separation, which might have choked New Eng
land from the advantages of her tariff, would not have
broken up western commerce ; for the planter would still
have raised his cotton and fed his negroes with our pro
visions. But now we have lost all — national unity,
in which there is strength, and that commerce which
made us a thriving and prosperous people.
When we have destroyed the planter's fields, and
scattered bis negroes, we have injured ourselves as

Extermination Rebuked. 83
much as we have injured him ; for we have destroyed
the consumers of our productions. The planter can
not buy our provisions, unless he raises cotton ; and
this he can not do, unless he has negroes to labor ; con
sequently, when we destroy him, and his means of pro
duction, we destroy ourselves.
But then, there is among us a body of visionary philo
sophers — deepest died in hell's polutions — who entertain
the idea of exterminating the southern people, and, of
giving their lands over to European immigrants, who
are to be the future growers of cotton. Were this pos
sible, it would be an act, for which, if there be one hell
deeper or hotter than another, the actors would deserve
the full measure of all its tortures. But it is, fortunately
for humanity, as impracticable as it is vicious, and as
visionary as it is marked with the characteristics of the
invisible power which gave it being, and directed its
utterance. •
The southern people may be exterminated, but when
they are, the bittern will shriek on northern as well as
on southern plains, and not a finger of the demented
host now .doing reverence to their rapping chief, will
be left to point to the graves which enclose their re
mains. Southern men are American men, who may
die as their fathers died before them, but when they fall,
they will greatly misrepresent their nativity, if they
do not bring the whole national temple with them.
But were they exterminated, and the north still left
with her numbers, the scheme would still be a failure,
for European mechanics can not readily be converted
into cotton growers, nor would they labor in southern
fields when they could find employment in climates
more congenial to their natures.. They did not emi-

84 National Resources.
grate to the British and French West Indies when sla
very was there abolished, and the richest lands in the
world reduced to mere nominal values; neither. have
they sought southern latitudes in any country when
they have been able to find homes in northern ones.
Were people not mad, they would see these things, and
desist from a policy which is crushing them to atoms.
But "they see not, neither do they hear;" and, as a
consequence, are forcing all their resources into a war,
the very success of which must reduce them to beggary
and degradation.
We have, in this chapter,, presented some figures show
ing the agricultural exports of the nation, and the source
of north-western prosperity. But let us now turn to
another exhibition of resources and effects, which is
equally clear and conclusive, and even more explan
atory of present conditions. At the commencement of
the war, there were, as shown by the census of 1860, in
the states called loyal, about $8,000,000,000 worth of
taxable property. Of that sum, we will, before the war
can now be closed, have squandered about $2,000,000,-
000, and have, at the same time, by the loss of men,
character, markets, and industrial habits, sunk the real
value of the remaining $6,000,000,000 probably $2,000,-.
000,000 more ; thus reducing our taxable property, at a
real basis, to . about $4,000,000,000, on which we will
have placed an incumbrance of about $2,000,000,000
of national debt: thus we will have, remaining about
four thousand million dollars worth of property mort
gaged to about one half of all it is worth.
Under our " shinplaster " currency, our property may
not have depreciated as much as above noticed, but
under a gold and silver medium, to which we are forced

National Burdens. 85
to come in our commerce with the world, we will be
much mistaken if the reduction is not fully equal to the
figures here employed.
The Secretary of the Treasury, in his annual message
of 1861, has, we are aware, estimated the property of the
country at much above these figures, — at about eleven
thousand millions of dollars ; but he resorts to specula
tion and not to the assessor's returns. This we think is
fallacious. The assessors are better judges of the prop
erty which they appraise than the secretary or his clerks
at Washington. He also includes in his report another
item of national strength— the surplus earnings of the
people, which we think is subject to the same exceptions ;
for whatever may be such resources in time of peace,
there can be no surplus earnings when the laboring men
of the nation are employed in war, and so withdrawn
from industrial pursuits. But whatever may be the real
facts of both expenditures and resources, enough is pre
sented under the. most favorable view which can possibly
be taken, to show that the wealth of the country is melt
ing away with the rapidity of snow before a summer's
sun — that our men are perishing in battles, arid that
debt is accumulating in mountains upon the nation.
It is admitted, we believe, on all hands, in view of
what is now before us, that the war debt will not be less
than $2,000,000,000. This sum must be paid, repudiated
or extinguished by a total dissolution of the federal
union. The two latter require no capital, but the for
mer requires money, and is therefore the immediate
subject of consideration. The interest alone on this
sum at six per cent, which is below the average rate
of interest, is $120,000,000 per annum ; to which add ten
per cent for collection, and the sum gathered from the

86 National Burdens.
people to pay interest alone, will amount to not less
than $132,000,000 every year. Add then to this the
ordinary expenses of the government, about $80,000,-
000, and without extinguishing a dollar of capital debt,
we are required to pay annually to the federal govern
ment alone, to say nothing of state and municipal ex
penditures, not less than $212,000,000, or nearly twice
as much as there is real money in the country to pay it
with. The Secretary of the Treasury, on the first of Decem
ber, 1861, estimated the gold and silver in the nation at
from two hundred and seventy-five to three hundred
millions of dollars. Of this sum, not less than one
hundred millions may be safely estimated to be in the
seceded states, leaving the remaining one hundred and
seventy-five or two hundred millions in the states called
loyal. But of this remaining sum, it is estimated that
not less than fifty millions, over and above importations,
have been exported from the country since the com
mencement of the war, which leaves us but about one
hundred and twenty-five or one hundred a fifty millions
of dollars in the northern states as our immediate metal
lic means, with which to meet our overtowering national
debt. We will, it is true, after the war, have some re
sources in our productive labor; but they will not be
as they have been, for many of our hitherto producers
are already demoralized. Some have grown too vain,
under the influence of shoulder-straps, to return to their
prior employments ; others, under the license of soldiers
in war, have become thieves, robbers and murderers,
and, as a consequence, will become a pest rather than a
support to the nation. Others will have become drunk
ards, to which may be added a wide spread population

Excuses for War.. 87
of free negroes, who poison the very atmosphere in
which they breath, and taint it more or less with such
conditions as now give character to Central America.
Under these accumulated burdens, and exhaustion of
resources, what are the prospects which await us in the
future? Markets lost, commerce destroyed, property
squandered, confidence impaired, men demoralized, debt
burdensome, taxes onerous, power reduced, dissension
rife, and the only people in the world on whom we could
rely for assistance in repelling foreign invasion, made
our most inveterate enemies. Are we not already a
fallen people ? Nations like men may hide their sores ;
but cancers gnaw the deeper the more they are concealed.

CHAPTER XI.
Excuses for "War — War. foe the Union A Deception — Effect of Conquest — Thk
avowed object of the war already a failure — deception — change  war
against State Rights — Evil Influences attach to Evil Persons — War w anted
for different objects — What now Fighting for — Gov. of New York's Sugges
tion — Constitution Disregarded— Lincoln's first Special Message — Central
ized Power — The Four Acts of Despotism — The President's Rapping Table —
Laws made by Madmen. -
No people ever waged a war without giving an excuse
for their aggressions. When the puritans resolved that
the world belonged to the saints, and that they were God's
sainted people, they gave an excuse for theft and mur
der. When the Romans invaded an unoffending people
—destroyed one half and enslaved the other half, they
professed to give them liberty. Where there is a will
there is a way ; and, on the same principle, where there
is a design or a desire, there is an excuse for its execu-

88 Union a Deception.
tion. This is, one of the advantages which man enjoys
through the endowments given him as a reasoning ani
mal. But of all the excuses ever given for the prosecu
tion of an aggressive war, few, if any, have been more
flimsy or less deserving of respect at the hands of honest
men, than that under which our armies are now desola
ting the country of our neighbors. We war, say Our
demented throngs, for the restoration of " The Union,"
and with union as a battle cry, rob, steal, pillage and
murder ; fire towns and cities, and rural habitations ; de
stroy all ages and conditions, and drive helpless women
and children to swamps and mountains for succor and
shelter. The very men who for a whole decade of years
labored with all their might, power and ability to de
stroy the union, now proclaim its . restoration the great
sum total of all their desires. Such deception is cursed
by the God of battles, who, in his mighty power, has
already strewed the earth with heaps of northern slain.
Army after army has perished in the field, and the
nation been reduced to beggary under the incessant
cry of " The Union," while in reality, not one gun
has been fired nor a single squadron moved in battle
for the union's restoration or security since the war be
gan. This may stifle the bellowing babbler, who
allows other men to do his thinking ; but men of reason
will find it as true as holy writ.
The union of these American States was a union of
assent, in which all parties, states and individuals were
equals. Such a union could exist only by assent ; con
sequently war, which is the clash of oppositions, could
destroy the union, but never uphold or restore it. Where
in then has this war been waged for the union?
The whole pretence has been a deception from the begin-

Union a Deception. 89
ning to the present hour. The-deception of a body of
evily designed politicians, who have sought their own
aggrandizement at their country's ruin; and who, in
the prosecution of their fiendish work, have forced our
unsuspecting young men to countless fields of blood and
slaughter, professedly for the support of the union, but
in' reality, amid visionary schemes of equality and per
sonal aggrandizements, for the union's destruction..
Such a union as exists between England and Ireland,
Austria and Hungary, and Russia and Poland, may be
sustained, as it may be established, by conquest; but
such a union is not the kind of union under which Amer
ica has prospered, nor is it such a union as the American
people, in the honesty and undemented conditions of
their soul, desire.
Had the sectional party of the north been so devoted
to union, as to have preferred it, as they now pretend,
to their own self aggrandizement and their abstract no
tions of policy, the union would never have been dis
turbed ; nor would blood have been shed even after dis
ruption became inevitable under conditions then exist
ing ; for had they agreed to support the constitution in
the spirit in which the federal court had expounded
it — to return fugitives and protect slave property in
the territories — no conflict could have ensued. But
this they would not agree to do, nor would they even
now consent to a restoration under a recognition of these
principles. How then can they, without the most unmit
igated effrontery, pretend to be unionists? They will
not have union unless they can have it on terms which
destroys the bond under which the union existed. This
is itself a test of principle, and shows at a glance the
false use which is made of the word union, and the de-

90 Union a Deception.
ception of the men who proclaim it as the great object
for which they are waging a wild and furious war.
The strength which a union of all the states gave to
the republic, was a matter of no little concern with a
large portion of the. northern people, and particularly
so with the half grown boys and young meiy who were
decoyed into the military service. They desired the glory
of a great and powerful nation, and to secure it enlisted
as soldiers. But like mules when harnessed to the wag
on, they have been compelled to haul such loads as have
been imposed upon them, to fight for the abolition of sla
very, for the destruction of state rights, and for the
establishment of a great and over-ruling central power.
The southern people i annihilated, would be a great
loss of American power ; and conquered, would not only
be an equal loss, but the conquered states would be a
painful element of national weakness. As sovereign
states joined to us by their own assent, they were a
tower of greatness ; but conquered, they would be a vol
cano on which northern feet would fear tp tread. A
standing army of a hundred thousand men would be re
quired to hold them in subjection ; and even then, we
would not dare to resent an insult from abroad, for fear
that the south would again fly to arms.
When the war broke upon the country, the demented
condition of the northern mind bore down all reason
wherever the distemper existed. Still, there were
among us, men of sobriety, and among them more
who doubted the policy of saving the union by force of
arms than gave vent to their opinions. They were sti
fled in mind, for the pill was sugar-coated. The pre
tense was to sustain the union-party of the south, and
so make it superior to the party of secession. This bore

Distempered Factions. 91
upon its face some show of plausibility; and accord
ingly, men, doubting their own judgment, yielded to a
trial of the administration's policy. But they should not
have been deceived when they found the president de
claring, not only against the secessionists, but against
the states, with all their elements of union and disunion
sentiments, as whole communities. This threw off dis
guise, and at it the " states' rights " men of the north
should have taken alarm. But as they did not, they
have now a right to demand of the president, a discontin
uance of a policy which has, in every way, proved an
entire failure. The union party of the south, which,
in the beginning was strong, has, to a man, by the war
waged against them, been driven into secession. This
proves the failure of, at least, the pretended policy, and
with it, the war should have been discontinued.
Distempered men may act without design, for they
have usually no real object to pursue. But the demon
ized condition has its peculiarities. Men under it are
deluded, but stimulated to a purpose. This we believe
is an item of most religious faiths. But in the practical
case now under discussion, let us take the elements of
our sectional party and compare them with the war as
it has been prosecuted, and we may see how foibles have
been encouraged, in order that the more general design
— the destruction of men — may be prosecuted.
The factions of the party now in power, to say noth
ing of the corresponding demented portions of the dem
ocratic order, may, for the purpose of these disquisitions,
be reduced to three. The first is a body of men who
desired war for the sake of war, for its pomp, its ease, its
distinctions, its destruction, and its plunder. They, of
course, had no particular political design.; but the other

92 - Distempered Factions.
two had. The first of these two is the abolition element —
the church fanatics, spiritualists, and Germanic infidels,
who desired the war for the abolition of slavery. The
other is the old federal, monarchical, or aristocratical el
ement, which has, from the foundation of the govern
ment, desired a strong and imposing central power.
These two have, in the main, directed the policy of the
war, and, although differing widely in their particular
objects, still, like the sectarians, spiritualists, and infi
dels, they unite in a common policy, as a means of at
taining separate ends. Both want the absorbtion of
state rights by the federal government. One, that power
may be removed from the masses, and wealth made su
perior to numbers ; the other, that the great northern
power, through congressional legislation, or the force of
arms, may crush out slavery in the southern states.
Thus, they have united, in a general policy, the object
of which is, to revolutionize the government, break
down the sovereignty of the states, and establish a new
government, based, not on assent and equality, but on
inequality and military power.
The Governor of New York has now, when designs
are becoming patent, very wisely directed attention to
the enquiry of whether we are fighting to subdue rebel
lion in the south, or liberty in the northern states. But
why was this question not sooner propounded? We
will answer. It was : First, because a general madness
overspread the whole country ; sweeping down, like a
mighty torrent, all questions and rights before it ; and,
Secondly, because we had then no governors through
whom to make the inquiry, for the demoniac power had
secured the state executives before it secured the pres
ident.

Centralized Power. 93
Mr. Lincoln had no sooner been inaugurated, than
he broke through all the bounds to which the consti
tution had confined his official power. He declared
whole states in insurrection, and precipitated armies
upon them — not in obedience to law, as a posse of the
nation, moving to execute the decrees of civil courts,
but as an army of his own, directed to subdue and to
conquer. Where did he get this right ? Neither Con
gress nor President has a right to declare a State in
insurrection ; nor have they a right to send an army in
to a state, unless in certain cases provided by law : to
execute civil process, to secure a republican form of gov
ernment, and to suppress insurrection, when called up
on to do so by the authority of the state.
This government was, before the revolution which
it has undergone in the hands of our present chief
magistrate, a government in which the military was
subservient to the civil power. But now conditions
are reversed: — 'the civil is subservient to military
rule. Mr. Lincoln occupies nearly a fourth of his special
message of July, 1861, in an effort to prove that the fed
eral government is supreme, and the states but dependen
cies. Mr. Dayton, minister to France, announced about
the same time the same doctrine in the French court.
Gen. Banks put on the epaulets, and then, pointing from
Arlington Heights to the capital, declared that the gov
ernment must be changed ; and when Congress assem
bled, all its actions tended to the same end. The four
great acts of despotism', the Tax Bill, the Finance Bill,
the Conscription Bill, and the Indemnity Bill, are all
continuations of the same programme ; and, taken to
gether, as effectually subvert the constitution and cen-

94 The Rapping Table.
tralize the national power, as it is possible for legislation,
backed by armies, to accomplish revolution.
The tax bill levies its burdens on labor, in order
that it may oppress the masses, and by exempting the
rich secure their support and their money with which to
sustain the central power. The finance bill enables the
secretary of the treasury to mortgage the whole country,
and to enrich favorites who are gathering fortunes out of
the war. The conscription act forces every man to bear
arms to sustain his oppressors; and the indemnity act
allows the president to do pretty much as he pleases, with
out being subject to the penalties of the law. Thus in the
combination is the government effectually changed, and
the great American republic already virtually ended in
a despotism. Mr. Lincoln, with his aiders and abettors, has assumed
great responsibilities in thus revolutionizing the govern
ment ; but unlike our old fashioned presidents, who were
compelled to consult the constitution, he has, in a secret
hole of the White House, a rapping table, which dis
courses sweeter music than ever issued from Ham
let's pipe. It is law, constitution and gospel ; and the
great magical power which gathers armies, presages
events, equalizes whites and negroes, and converts paper
into gold. Washington, Jefferson and Jackson, Caesar,
Hannibal, Napoleon, Wellington, and all the other great
men of history, wake from their slumbers and protrude
their counsels through it ; direct the plans of battles, the
windings of anacondas, the policy of proclamations, and
the movements of armies ; so that a new dispensation
looms up around the present power, while laws and con
stitutions flee before the mystical light, as ragged relics
of the vulgar past. Delphos had her oracles, Olympus

Spirits Promise a President. 95
her enchantments ; but all now sink to insignificence be
fore the superior powers of this wonderful table.
We may satirize executive imposture and delusion, but
no irony can equal realities. The nation is virtually on
fire, its property melting in the general conflagration, and
the blood of its children flowing from its mountains to
its oceans; while executive councils gather in dark rooms,
and direct armies and a great nation's policy, as they
themselves are directed by spirit rappings. We cannot
move the demented from his delusions, for men are wed
ded to their idols. But there is still a wisdom in the
country, and to it we appeal, to come forth from its slum
bers, and save, if possible, what little yet remains of our
sinking, suffering and bleeding nation. We cannot
council resistance to law, although the laws be made by
madmen. But let the people assemble in great and im
posing meetings, and, in the majesty of their sovereign
power, denounce this the most groundless, as well as the
most deplorable, of civil wars.

CHAPTER XII.
SpmiTS Promise a President — Mr. Lincoln Pronounced the Promised Man — His
Mission — Spiritualists Rejoice — Patriaeohical Order — Socialistic Pamphlet
— Number and Strength of Spiritualists — Spiritual Circle in the President's
House — Mr. Lincoln's Madness — Spkitual Tests — Campaigns Directed — Ohio
Diggers - Mountain Cove Diggers — Low Spheres — Genesal Delusion — The
Enemy in the People's Mind. — Thev Drift with the General Disorder —
National Delusions-Other Wars in the Future.
For a number of years before the war, the spiritual
ists were promised, by spirits, a president of their own
faith ; and when Mr. Lincoln was nominated by the
Chicago convention, he was pronounced that man — se-

96 Spiritualists Rejoice
lected by spirits for the very work — the equalization of
white men and negroes — which he is now endeavoring
to perform.
Of the promise of a spiritualistic president we speak
knowingly ; for our circles were then in full operation,
and the communications made directly to us; but for
what afterwards followed — the selection of Mr. Lincoln,
etc., we must depend upon the reports of others, for our
circles were then discontinued ; but our information is
of such a character, as to remove all doubts of its cor
rectness. The communications were no doubt received
as reported; and the nomination, we have as little
doubt, was spiritually directed. But the spirits were
demons who, for some great reason in the divine econ
omy, were allowed to afflict humanity. A controlling
element of the concern was abolitionism, which is itself
a test of demoniac influence. It is a war against nature —
an insidious attempt to equalize unequals, and to nar
row the compass of liberty, under a pretence of enlarg
ing it. God speaks through his laws, and where nations
conform to them, there is peace and harmony ; but
when they are obstructed, wars follow with as mach cer
tainty as disease and convulsions follow obstructions of
the physical man. Thus abolitionism, which, when ap
plied to break the fetters of an enslaved race of white
men, may be a divine principle ; when applied, as it now
is, to equalize white men and negroes, it is demoniac.
At the nomination and election of Mr. Lincoln, the
abolition portion of the spiritualists were highly de
lighted ; and, as may still be seen in their publications of
that time, rejoiced all over America. The promises
made them had been so far fulfilled, which alone was
cause for that rejoicing ; but in addition to what they

Patriarchal Order. 97
had then received, the$ expected, through . their pres
ident's administration, to see their policy (see chapter
IV.) made permanent in the nation ; and they, as a con
sequence, made the nation's principal rulers.
The full extent of their anticipations they alone, of
course, can answer ; but if we may judge from the ex
travagance of spiritual promises, and from the charac
ter and operations of some spiritual associations, with
which we become acquainted during our investigations,
crowns and coronets must have danced in their imag
inations, and the whole country, with one general im
pulse, appeared as descending to their control.
A society ' of " Patriarchs," which sprung up in
Cincinnati about eight or nine years ago, and which
has since become of such importance among the faith
ful as to be made the high court of appeal from distant
parts of the union, may, in its operations, throw some
light*on these spiritualistic anticipations. But first of
its rise, which is as interesting as its subsequent pro
ceedings. This is as follows : A gentleman, not knowing
himself to be mediumistic, nor even at the time a spirit
ualist, was, as the story is told, at a late hour of a cer
tain night, placed under a trance ; and, while so condi
tioned, was directed to go to a house in a part of the, city,
where he knew that no house existed ; still, as the direc
tion was imperative, he proceeded, and when he reached
1he place, which he knew the day before to be a vacant
lot, he found a magnificent mansion, with high steps and.
splendid ornaments, in front of the door. He was, of
course, struck with wonder at the sudden change ; but
in pursuance of his directions, ascended the flight of
steps before him and rang the bell; when presently
the door opened, and he was received by a well clothed!

7

98 Patriarchal Order.
and intelligent looking gentleman, who conducted him
to a magnificent parlor, beautifully adorned and lighted ;
and there, after a few minutes social conversation, in
vested him with a human skull, a slab of marble per
forated with holes, which, as characters, he was taught
to read; and with which, together with a ritual and
some other appendages, he was directed, under instruc
tions then, given him, to form a secret society, which he
was assured would some day control the whole world.
He learned all that it was necessary for him to learn, when
the man and the house disappeared, and he again found
himself at home in his chamber. The occurrence, he
was satisfied, was not merely an ordinary dream, and
yet he was at a loss to know in what other sense to con
sider it. In this way he continued for several days,
when, to add to his wonder, a box was brought to him
by express, which contained all the implements of the
proposed order which he had seen in the fabulous or
spiritual mansion. He then, on learning of some active
spiritualists, informed them of what had occurred to him,
and, with their assistance, established the order. He was
promised a rapid increase of numbers ; but great as were
his promises, they were exceeded by the reality, for men
rushed to the* society with the same spirit that they after
wards rushed to the army at the breaking out of the
war. We saw as many as a hundred admitted into
a single lodge on a single day, while others were sent
away for the want of time in which to pass them
through the ceremony. But, like the war, the order
soon lost its enchanting powers ; and, after a year or
two, none remained but the most visionary of the spi
ritualists to give it support. Like the war in another
particular, it started in a spirit of general equality and

Socialistic Pamphlet. 99
universal liberty, but no sooner was it fairly under
way, than new revelations came to its principal ac
tors ; new degrees were formed, and the leading men
and women — for it took in the " strong-minded women "
as well as the strong minded men — were selected as the
future rulers of the earth. In this may be seen the
spiritualistic tendency, and its application to our national
society, under its present rulers.
Many orders of mind mingle in the spiritual, as well
as in other movements, so that hopes and desires vary
with the particular mould of intellects. Some are ambi
tious of distinction, some covetous, others indolent, and
still others ambitious, of seeing great changes in
the forms of society. An annonymous writer of a
spiritualistic pamphlet, which has just been handed us,
differs, somewhat, from the great men of the order above
noticed. He is a decided devotee to "social communi
ties." He says, " A people working for the interest of
one another grow strong in harmonious elements, and rise
rapidly in the scale of being. This is to be the new
order of things ; but all old rubbish must first be cleared
away — all institutions of oppression must be swept from
the face of the land, and men must begin anew, upon a
new basis. The present war is preparing- the way for all
this to come."
"The day of count and reckoning is nearing us, and
will assuredly come, no matter how far off it may now
seem, and, as noticed above, the present civil war is just
clearing the ground for it. The forces are marshalling.
The present revolution of blood will usher in a much
more important and mighty event, a revolution of peace."
This, it is true, is but the speculations of some ideal
man. But it shows the hopes and expectations, and,

100 The President Consulting the Rappings.
with them, the designs of a body of quasi religionists,
who claim to number not less than a million of people
in the United States — who control many important pa
pers ; whose literature, in the short space of ten years, has
grown into a respectable library ; who present to the
1 country the names of no less than five hundred able and
energetic writers and public speakers, (see A. J. Davis'
Annual of Progress,) and who include in their number
not only many members of congress and of the cabinet,
but even the president himself, of these once united, but
now disunited states. • Are not these matters of sufficient
importance to command the attention of a people, who,
through spiritual or spiritualistic influences, are now
bleeding at every pore.
Since writing the above, the newspapers of the day
have very fortuitously came to our support, by present
ing us, under executive permission, conclusive evidence
of the fact, that Mr. Lincoln, and at least a portion of
his cabinet and editorial supporters, are now holding
spiritual circles in the presidential mansion, and consult
ing spirits in regard to the propects and conduct of the
war. Numerous reports are before the country, but that of
the Boston Gazette, dated Washington, April 23d, 1863,
is probably the most complete, although others are
clear in presenting the point, that the president and his'
constitutional advisers are now employed in consulting
the rappings. Things once secret- are now intentionally
made public ; but, in the reports, we see a disposition in
the reporters to feel the nation's pulse in regard to the
president's proclivities, while at the same time an effort
is made to shield him from public censure. He is pre
sented as a mere casual inquirer with but little or no faith

Mr. Loncoln's Experience. 101
in what transpires. But this, we are satisfied, is a de
ception. Mr. Lincoln, we are well assured, is as con
firmed a spiritualist as there is in the United States ;
has full faith in the communications, and believes himself
selected by spirits to "clear away the rubbish," as no
ticed in the spiritualistic paper above quoted, prepare
atory for that good time, which he fancies is to come
through his administration.
But let it not be supposed, in view of these strictures,
that we censure Mr. Lincoln for believing that spirits
actually communicate ; this would be grossly unjust, for
instead of censuring him for such belief, he has our full
approval in this particular, for we know the point to be
one in regard to which he is much in advance of the
great body of men, who think themselves much wiser.
But the point of which we disapprove is his placing any
confidence in what spirits tell him ; and our censures are
for his attempting to administer our government under
mysterious and unknown councils; The people's gov
ernment should be directed by the people, and not by
spiritual communications.
In these presidential sittings, we find not only Mr.
Lincoln and portions , of his cabinet, but prominent
members of the press in the same combination, which
indicates the way in which/influence is exerted on the
masses. Mr. John W. Forney appears conspicuous in
the circle, which, when taken in connection with the
course he has hitherto pursued, is suggestive of more
than his readers may have readily comprehended.
After his political somersault his course became very
analagous to that of Mr. Horace Greeley, which leaves
the apprehension that if the latter operated under a dis
guise in the work of inoculating his numerous eastern

102 Mr. Lincoln's Spirtual Tests.
nad western readers, (see Chapter I.) the former may
have practiced the same deception on the people of
Pennsylvania. Such things have been done within our
knowledge by both press and pulpit, and, did our limits
admit, we might here furnish some interesting cases.
We have heard many details of Mr. Lincoln's spirit
ual experience, all of which goes to prove that he has
had many clear and convincing tests of spiritual pres
ence*; but he seems, like the rest of his spiritualistic
associates, to be blinded in his confidence, and unable
to discriminate between a test of spiritual presence, and
the reliance which should be placed on spiritual coun
sels. He may know himself to be more indebted to the
invisible than to the visible world for his prominence,
and, as a consequence, regard himself as a special ob
ject of spiritual care and direction ; other rulers have
done so before him, but, in his case, the very idea of his
having a correspondence above the people, cannot do
otherwise than withdraw his regards from them, and
prepare him for their oppression. If he believes him
self commissioned "to clear away the rubbish" for.
some great event, he may rejoice in the people's destruc
tion ; and, like the Roman tyrant, wish them to have
but one neck, that he may dispatch them all at a single
blow. Good tests of spiritual presence seldom fail in se
curing confidence, which, in its turn, is very apt to
place the believer at the mercy of influences which
may work out his ruin ; consequently, herein is a
point to be eschewed. The test of spiritual presence is
real, and yet, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, in
most other particulars, it is a complete deception. The
operation is thus : The medium is surrounded with a

How Spiritual Tests Deceive. 103
circle of spirits, who are in rapport with him. They
see the inquirer's mind, and, . by reading it, tell him,
through the medium, of things Which he knows are un
known to all the world, except to himself and the de
ceased person with whom he supposes himself commu
nicating. This is the test, a complete test of spiritual
presence, but a deception in every other particular.
Persons who have consulted test media, will remember
that they were required to write the names of a number
of deceased friends on scraps or slips of paper, to run
their eyes over the list, and to reflect on each name as
they passed it, or to roll the slips in separate balls, and
through a particular routine, to place them on a table.
This is, at least as we understand the subject,, to exercise
the mind of the inquirer in regard to the persons whose
names are on the paper, and through that exercise, to
bring forward the memory that it may be read.
Communications being thus obtained, it is easy to per
ceive how men may be imposed upon, and particularly
how a nation, through its president, may be hurled into
endless ruin. A demon, or, what is more probable in
the present condition of our country, a host of demons,
may stand by a medium, and by reading the inquirer's
mind, give him such information as will secure his con
fidence ; after which they may lead him, with all. whom
he leads, headlong to destruction. Let Mr. Lincoln, al
ready supposing himself spiritually selected for his posi
tion, and spiritually commissioned for a particular pur
pose, be advised by a spirit, whom he believes to be a
brother, a father, or some other near and reliable friend,
to do some act involving great risk and responsibility ;
and what may be the consequence to the people or to
the armies which are at his command ? Let some in vis-

104 The Ohio Diggers.
ible intelligence, intent on humanity's ruin, assume to,
be Washington, Jackson,. Caesar, or Napoleon, direct a
battle or a campaign," and cabinet officers give heed to
his councils ; and what must follow as a result ? Look
upon, the whole history of this administration, see the
hight from which the nation has fallen, the depth to
which it has sunk, the ruin which has followed every
measure, plan and direction, and tell me if all does not
harmonize with the idea here suggested.
Mr. Lincoln's faith, not his learning, has made him
mad ; and so deep is that madness, that could the facts
which have influenced his policy be ascertained, he
could, we have not a doubt, be proved a madman on a fair
trial, under a writ of lunacy.
It is well for men to know that spirits are around
them, but, he who follows spiritual directions, will fol
low a will-'o-the-wisp ; which, as is said in the Irish
legend, will lead him through bogs and over stiles, until
it swamps him in quags and mires;
A few instances of spiritual direction in regard to this
and some other points above suggested, will cast some
light on spiritual character.
A circle of spiritualists in the interior of Ohio, a few
years ago, were directed by spirits to proceed to a cer
tain place, and there to dig to a certain depth in the
ground ; if our memory is right, it was just ten feet,
where they were assured they would find a very valu
able treasure. They accordingly proceeded, stealthily,
it is true, under the cover of night ; and after laboring
until day began to break upon them, found themselves
at the depth required ; but no treasure was there to re
ward .their labors. Something they now, of course,
knew was wrong; and, accordingly, returned to their

Moral op the Ohio Diggings. 105
rapping table, which had by that time, discovered that
it had made a slight mistake ; that the treasure was
twenty feet instead of ten from the surface of the earth.
This, of course, was satisfactory to faithful believers ;
and, accordingly, the party proceeded on the following
night, and dug the additional ten feet ; but through some
misfortune, no treasure was still found. Another sitting
was of course resorted to, when, as before, another little
mistake was discovered ; the treasure was thirty instead
of ten feet from the surface ; but there was an absolute
certainty of its being there, accordingly, they were about
to proceed to a third effort, when a rebellious member of
the circle, without the fear of military orders before his
eyes, broke silence and said, " Are not the spirits fool
ing us ? " " Why, to be sure we are, ' ' was the reply. ' { If
you are fools enough to dig for treasure, we will keep
you at it."
This, we believe, ended that digging, and probably
made wiser men of the diggers. But whether it did or
did not, it has left a moral in which President Lincoln
may probably see his own madness.
He entered this war with the most unbounded con
fidence of his ability, with seventy-five thousand men, to
crush all opposition in sixty or ninety days. When these'
seventy-five thousand failed, he wanted just five hundred
thousand more ; when these failed, he wanted three or
four hundred thousand more; when these failed, he
wanted another three hundred thousand ; and now, when
two years of bloody war have swept over us, when our
resources are exhausted, our men slaughtered, and our
armies, once pompous and aggressive, are compelled to
act on the defensive, he is calling for the whole country
under a general conscription. Thus he has been kept

106 Mountain Cove Diggings.
digging and digging, deeper and deeper, and will, we
have not a doubt, be kept digging, while the people of
the nation are fools enough to give him men and money.
But let not all censure be here placed on Mr. Lincoln,
for the great body of the northern people were just as
mad as he was, and rushed with the same desire to the
conflict; were equally sure of their unlimited power, saw
no men's rights but their own ; and with their soul's
crammed with demoniac fire, would listen to no terms,
no charity, no compromise, but unconditional submission
of the whole southern people to chains and halters.
Such madness is the kind of madness which the gods
infuse into men whom they wish to destroy.
' One more instance of digging may possibly assist in
illustrating what has already been said, or in supporting
the general moral.
A colony, under the auspices of one John M. Speers,
who had located themselves at a place called Mountain
Cove — the precise locality of which we do not now re
member, but think it was some where in the state of
New York — were directed to dig at ascertain place, at a
certain angle of descent, and to a certain depth into the
mountain, where they were to find more gold than all
the California's, the Ophir's, or the Colorado's, could in
centuries produce. None of that colony, of course,
doubted the correctness of their spiritual communica
tions, for they belonged to the same school that now
controls the nation ; therefore, as might be expected,
they soon performed the digging, but something more
than digging in this case was required to bring the
mountain to her labor. The colony was to form in pro
cession on a certain night at low twelve, with flambeaus
in their hands, and with their patriarch in front, with a

The Low Spheres. 107
pick on his shoulder, were to march into the cave, and
when at its deepest extremity, the pick was to be struck
into the ground, when the whole interior of the moun
tain was to tumble forth in great rocks of virgin gold.
The procession was formed and moved as directed;
and when it reached its destination, the pick, after a few
prescribed words of enchantment, was swung into the
mountain with all the force which the venerable patri
arch could summon to the effort ; when, wonderful to re
late, out tumbled a chunk of blue clay, half as big as a
boy's fist, but not as much gold as would jingle on a
tomb stone has yet responded to either pick, shovel or
enchanting commands.
This ended the Mountain Cove diggings. All had
been done to order, and the ceremonies religiously per
formed. But, as in the Ohio diggings, a slight mistake
was now found to have been made in the calculations of
the spirits.
Pranks like these may amuse for the ridicule which
they cast on those who become the subjects of their im
posture. But they lose all their mirthfulness, when
nations, under the same influences, rush furiously to
war, scatter their fortunes, their women and their chil
dren, and slaughter men by hundreds of thousands.
They then acquire a grave and serious importance, and
display accumulated disorders, for while deceitful com
munications, directing men to dig for hidden treasures,
simply disclose familiarity and deception, the slaugh
ter of men unfolds a malignity which is associated with
deep and horrid conditions.
We are here locally, but not all conditionally, in low
spheres, which are filled with all kinds, races, ' shades
and colors, of spiritual beings. These united, are vicious

108 National Delusions.
as well as familiar, and, as a consequence, destroy men,
as well as ridicule and deceive them. They are vain
as well as low and vulgar ; and, like men in the material
form, labor to impose their own order of society on others]
consequently, the impressions which the world receives
for equalizing whites, reds, copper colored, and negroes,
come from these low spheres.
Men are at all times more or less subject to the influ
ences which surround them. If these be vicious, they
will partake of the vicious mania, and unknowingly
drift with its currents. In this way have our people
been drifted onwards, until they have been made the
instruments of their own destruction. But spiritual
disorders are not perceptible to those who are within
their influence. We cannot know our own delusions ;
but when time and reverses shall have dissipated the
mirage of the national mind, and the American people
been compelled to look upon the wreck of their once great
and thriving nation, they may learn, when too late, the
delusion of spite, and that all their fire and pomp of
war, their gigantic armies and navies, their levies, con
scriptions, and battles, were but wild adventures in pur
suit of visionary treasures. In the expenditure of mil
lions upon millions of dollars, and the accumulation of
armies upon armies; they may discover the spiritualistic
councils of dig on, and still on, until labors end
in exhaustion. In the rush of men to the tented field,
they may see a ¦ repetition of the rush made to the pat-
riarchial order ; and, in its animating spirit, hear the
same shouts of equality and freedom ; while chains jin
gle among the masses, and crowns and coronets, in the
contemplation of the future, dance around shoulder-
straps and commissions. They may see the great national

Delusions. 109
procession marohing into imaginary coves, and hear
their bewildered chief, in the ceremony of orders and
proclamations, . commanding the gold to tumble forth
from the mountains. Flowers may strew their paths, and
phantoms beckon to fields of imaginary glory till ruin,
in the sequel, announces the unwelcome fact that errors
have occurred in some portion of the spiritual reckonings.
Nations are but aggregations of men who are no wiser
than individuals, for we have the whole range of human
nature in the single human form. What deludes one may
delude all, consequently, as hundreds per day could rush
into a mystical order of ideal greatness, thousands, ani
mated with the same spirit, could rush into armies ; and,
as corresponding numbers could dig for treasures, mil
lions may rush to battle ; and, in the pomp and power
of war, indulge in equally wild and visionary imag
inations. Many delusions have already fled before the dissolving
power of battles. No men now elbow each other out of
their ways to enroll their names in armies ; nor is an
enlistment longer regarded as " A free pass to a pleas
ure excursion -into Dixie." But though many delusions
have fled, many more still remain, and will continue to
remain, while the demoniac influence holds dominion
over the northern mind. That influence must be broken,
or the -nation become a wilderness.
As men are spiritual beings, in the material form as
well as when out of it, they may be capable of originating,
in the one condition, whatever they may in the other, and
as a consequence by conflicting magnetism engender their
own mental disorders ; still, most, if not all great popular
delusions, we apprehend, are spiritual — the result of in
terior influences acting on the public mind. Such influ-

110 Delusions.
ences bewilder and force men into the. wildest absur
dities. The Christians of the middle ages flew to their crusades
in direct opposition to their faith, and with a common
impulse which displays at a glance the presence of a com
mon influence acting at the self-same moment throughout
all Christendom on every individual mind. This alone
is some evidence of an unseen ocean on which humanity
drifts. But every age has its peculiarities, which show, in
some respects, a continued change, not only in men, but in
the unseen influences which act upon them. The crusades
was an age of religious wildness, and a disregard of
worldly treasure. Such was the interior influence which
then acted. But in the financial delusions which have
since followed, rapacity seems to have been a ruling
feature, still they all may have sprung from the same in
terior fountain, but displayed themselves on the world
through different departments of the human mind.
The John Law scheme, or Mississippi bubble — the
South Sea bubble — the Darien bubble,, and the French
revolution, as well as the crusades display the world
under delusions, and prove the vanity 'of- men in their
assumptions of superior power. Men may reason within
a circle, but they are entirely unconscious of its bounds.
The mad are always wise in their own estimation, but
sobriety reasoning from effects to causes, cannot do other
wise than admit the distemper of the present as well as
of former ages. Men are destroying each other and each
"other's property, and desolating a country which they
professedly war to preserve. This is not the work of
sanity, or of rational design. But we need not labor a
self-evident proposition. The nation is mad, and its
afflictions not only confined to a single department of the

Delusions. Ill
human mind, as seems to have been the case in the
delusions above alluded to, but every department of
mentality seems to be involved. Some men are mad
in the pursuit of money ; others in their fears of losing
what they have already scraped together. Some are
mad on rehgion, others on liberty ; some in their love of
distinction ; and still others, in the pompous pride of great
national power. Thus all dispositions are inflamed.
Contractors are patriotic because the war gives them
money. New York merchants and New England factory
proprietors are Unionists for the commerce which seces
sion would carry to other ports. Capitalists are Unionists
to preserve the high prices of their property, and are
war men, not for the Union as it was, but for a new
Union, — a Union of force, in which Government shall be
armed with greater authority for the protection of private
property, and in which capital shall be made a political
power. Objects thus multifarious are heated by an inte
rior fire, and all on whom it operates are sent headlong
in pursuit of the general delusion. The war, the war for
any and all purposes, no matter what.
The burning fire is in the public mind. The fanatic
will murder his brother white man to bleach the hide of
his assumed brother negro, and the politician will murder
every body east, west, north or south, who is so intolera
bly stupid as not to vote his favorite ticket. Thus, dis
temper runs through every avenue of public thought,
while mentality heaves from a burning interior world
which is the magnetism of demons.
Having thus displayed the nature and character of be
wildering causes, let us turn for a moment to a contempla
tion of ultimates and effects and, through the defeat of
objects, see delusion under another phase.

112 Delusions.
Those capitalists who have feared the agrarian ten
dency of the times, and who have leaped into the war to
strengthen the federal arm, in order that it may secure
their fortunes and multiply their political powers, will
find in the end that they will have but little or no- prop
erty left for governmental protection. In their wild and
feverish efforts to keep it from the rabble, they have run
to the opposite extreme, and given it to a crazy Presi
dent, who is now throwing it all away.
When Mr. Chase's financial bubble' (which is but the
John Law scheme transferred from France to America)
bursts, as it must burst, when the rigid spirit of war
abates, or a few more millions of gold are exported from
the country, then rich men will become poor, for when
the nation becomes bankrupt, the people, who are its
constituent members, must partake of its misfortunes.
While bulls are employed to toss up national credit,
and two or three millions of treasury notes are issued
daily from the federal mill, trade' may flourish, and the
tax-gatherer return with his budget. But let those op
erations cease, and the bubble must reach its point of
explosion. Five-twenties may then be sold by the pound,
and our great national financier discover that neither he
nor his great prototype, the famous Law, of Mississippi
notoriety, have been able to find the philosopher's stone,
or make gold out of paper. Then the rich must lose, for
they only will have the securities. The religionist, too,
like the capitalist, will see his castles tumbling, for con
gregations will sink in their ability to pay their preachers,
and, as a consequence, devotions be allowed to slacken.
The liberty shrieker will find the object of his cares, a
slave by nature, and, that liberty, for which he pretends
to be so much distressed, gone with the fall of the negro's

Delusions. 113
master, while the pompous chief who sports his straps,
and dreams of renown and distinction, may find, in the
reverse of fortunes, that his great armies and navies have
been carrying a load of dementation which forces a big
discount on official glory.
Merchants who measure blood by its value in trade,
will find that an impoverished people will have no
money with which to buy their wares ; and those even
deeper demented, who still blow the horn of conquest,
will find, if they outlive the storm which, through their
means, now spreads horror and desolation — that the
subjugation of five or six millions of American freemen,
with a country equal in extent to one-third of all inhab
itable Europe, is a work much easier talked of than
performed. Russia was about fourteen years in conquering the Cir
cassians ; the United States about seven in subduing the
Seminoles in the Florida swamp3 and marshes, and Aus
tria, with twenty-seven millions of people, would have
failed in her effort to conquer Hungary with but eight
millions, had not Russia come to her assistance.
These are plain facts, and on the subject of conquest
speak volumes of truth to the wise and reflecting. But
our people will not see realities till time and further ex
haustion shall have dispelled their delusions ; neither will
the demented power at Washington falter in its madness
while spirits promise it success ; nor abate its rigor until
it has forced the same issue on the northern States that
it has forced upon the southern.
The' disorder of the country is in the war element — the
demented portion of the public mind; from whence it
extends to the administration in which the demoniac
power centres. Here, spite, vanity and vengeance, thick-

114 The Crushing Power.
en, and from this accumulated fullness, reacts upon the
nation, stimulates — in its own supporters — a thirst for
human blood, and by its reverse action, or infringement
on nature's laws, forces the undemented to unavoidable
resistance. As the collision of moving clouds forces the dis
charge of their contents in showers, storms and thun
ders, so do the collisions of mind, when demons intrude
through earth's mentalities, force the collision of arms.
These fearful conditions are on and around us, and unless
God, in his mercy, interposes his supremacy and breaks
the demoniac power which rules in the nation, blood
must yet flow in as wild profusion from northern as it
ever has flowed from southern mountains. Our de
mented chief, with his pandemonial council, has cast his
die on the plane of fortune, and with arms resolved on
popular subjugation. Here is the chalice rudely forced
to the lips of reason. The demoniac power bears down
upon liberality, and will continue to bear until it forces
a resistance, for blood can alone appease its wildness.
The nation crumbles before it, and already mourns the
loss of many hundreds of thousands of its slaughtered
people. But how shall reason be again restored while
every official form is the habitation of demented power ?
Hbpe wearies as she looks upon conditions, but her
lights, though dimmed, are not extinguished. Let the
demon of abolitionism be withdrawn, or forced from the
executive and legislative halls of the nation, and the
boiling ocean which now lashes the skies with its angry
foam, will, as by the touch of magic, again return to its
tranquillity, and the sun of the morning agaiu arise on a
calm and peaceful ocean. But while interior vengeance
bears down upon us, blood must gush from the nation,

Depth of Madness. 115
and the Prince' of Darkness, who raps on the President's
table, ride in fiendish exultation over ruined walls, and
the mangled bodies of America's slaughtered people.
Men, and whole congregations of men, who could leap
with the change of the winds, from a holy horror of the
Sayers and Heenan encounter — a mere round or " bout"
of pugilistic skill, with bare fists and good nature — to a
fiendish exultation in the wholesale destruction of their
own countrymen, are in a condition of mind which fits
them for the wildest possible excesses of human slaughter.

Note to Page 6.
Judge Edmonds has recently appeared in the public prints
and denied the accusation of his being one of Mr. Lincoln's
spiritual advisers. For this we give him credit, for our infor
mation of the fact lies only in hearsay. But there is another
point connected with the same . affair floating in particular
circles, which is, that, the President has been consulting the
spirits through the mediumship of one of the Judge's daughters.
Of this we have heard no denial.