And while on this subject, we venture to speak a few words on this oft-reiterated accusation, that the Abolitionists have directly caused this war, and from which they themselves by no means shrink.  Whatever influence or aid they may have given, it is now becoming clear as day that no opposition to slavery was ever half so conducive to Secession and rebellion as Slavery itself.  Had there never been an Abolitionist in the North, the self-generated arrogance of the ‘institution’ must have spontaneously impelled the Southern party to treason.  The exuberant insolence which induced the most biting expressions of contempt for labor and serfs, was fully developed in the South long before the days of Garrison; long even before the Quakers of Pennsylvania put forth their protest against slavery, a full century ago.  The North was accused by the Southern wolf of troubling the stream, though its course was directly toward the wished-for victim.  It is time that the absurd cry ceased, and that the South be made to bear its own load of guilt.  Ever arrogant, chafing at the intellectual supremacy of the North, envious of its prosperity, despising with all the rancor of a lawless ‘chivalry’ our regard for the rights of persons, prone to dissipation, and densely ignorant of the great tendencies to progress which characterize the civilization of the nineteenth century, the Southerner has ever felt the same tendency to break away, and be off, which a raw, fiery, conceited youth feels to sunder wholesome domestic ties.  The stimulus was within, not from without.

It is to be regretted that the editor of this, in so many respects valuable, pamphlet, in speaking of Northern men of influence who belong to the K.G.C., or its other aids, should have cited under the vague heading of ‘said to be,’ the New-York Herald, Journal of Commerce, Express, ‘and a French newspaper’ in New-York City, the Boston Courier and Post, the Hartford Times, the Albany Atlas and Argus, the Rochester Union, the Buffalo Courier, the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Detroit Free Press, the Chicago Times, and the Milwaukee News.  While we entertain no doubt that among the editors of these newspapers are men who are at heart as traitorous and as Southern as their colleagues of any Richmond journal, [we have ourself seen a small Secession flag paraded on the desk of an editor of one of the above-mentioned publications,] we must still protest against any other than definite charges, even against men whose daily deeds and utterances of treason have been of more real service to the South than all the trash and trickery of Quack Bickley himself.  It is indeed charged that ’these are the principal names on the lists of traveling messengers for those States,’ but it should be remembered that such accusation requires clear proof.  With this single exception, we commend the pamphlet in question as a document well worth perusal and investigation.  The subject, as it stands, appears trashy and melodramatic; but be it remembered the Southern mind is prone to trash and romance, and quacks and adventurers would be more likely to be found actively working to aid treason founded on folly than would men of real ability.