never have been accomplished save by a long established and perfectly drilled organization.  It is not enough to sway millions that the leaders simply know what they wish to do, or that they have the power to do it.  There must be organization and subordination, if only to control the independent action of demagogues and of selfish politicians, who abound in the South as elsewhere.  Had the existence of the K.G.C. never been revealed, the historian would have detected it by its results, and been compelled in fairness to admit that it was admirably instituted to fulfill its ends—­evil as they were—­and that its work was well done.

The editor of the pamphlet has good grounds for asserting that the K.G.C. embraces among its members thousands of secretly disloyal men in the North, and that these are of all grades of society.  Let it, however, be remembered that previous to the breaking out of this war there were many who did not see Disunion as they now view it, and that their ties with the South were often of the most brotherly kind.  Indeed, when Secession was first openly agitated, and until Sumter fired the Northern heart, myriads who would now gladly disown those words were wont to say:  ‘Well, if they are determined to go, I suppose we must lose them.’  Would Fernando Wood have ever dared at that time to publish a proclamation recommending the secession of New-York as a free city had there not then existed a singular apathy, or rather a strange blindness, to the horrible results which must flow from disunion?  In those days the country was blind—­it has seen many an old error and delusion dispelled since then—­unfortunately too many among us have still much to learn!  Let those who still oppose Emancipation remember that a day will come when they, too, will unavoidably appear as the tories of the great Revolution now in progress!

Our informant declared that should he write an exposition of the K.G.C., it would differ in many respects from that given in the Journal, forgetting apparently, that Mr. Prentice had already explicitly stated that since the great question of Disunion sprung up, the K.G.C. had materially changed its character, and must unavoidably, from its very nature, continue to change and modify details to suit new exigencies.  The whole history of secret society, whether in its forms Masonic, Templar, Illuminee, Carbonari, Philadelphian, or Marianne; whether universal, political, social, military, or revolutionary, is a history of modifications of mere detail, compelled by circumstances.  The mere forms of initiation, the Ritual of the Order, pass-words, grips, and signs, are of comparatively small importance, in fact, they appear supremely silly; and were it not undoubtedly true that the mass of the initiated were correspondingly silly, though very wicked, fellows, we might almost wonder that such rococo nonsense should be deemed essential to the management of a