to oppose secession by force.  They had arranged for their diplomatic influence on the other side of the Atlantic, and bargained for the subversion of Democracy in the South.  It planned beforehand for arming treason and disarming the Union, and most adroitly were its plans in this respect carried into effect.  It had gained over to its side most of the Southern material in the little army and navy of the country, and prepared it for perfidy, in committing devastation or theft on the public property.  Thus allied and thus equipped, in the confidence of its pernicious strength, it commenced its warfare on society.

’How much injury can we inflict upon the North?  How much of the debts owing to Northern citizens can we confiscate?  How much property in the South owned by Northern men can we appropriate?  How much can we make Northern commerce suffer by depression of business, privateering, or otherwise?  To what extent can we paralyze Northern mechanical industry, subvert Northern trade, and lay it under disabilities?  How much can we distress the laboring classes in England, in France, in other countries in Europe, whereby we may compel them to clamor for the intervention of their respective governments against the North, and against its attempts to uphold the Union?’ The whole reasoning of the conspirators was based on the supposed power, coupled with the intent and effort to inflict wide-spread and common injury.  The scheme and all its contemplated and attempted incidents of management were such as the pro-slavery spirit in politics only could engender.

It required many years of gradual development, in connection with the ultimate culmination of treason, to shake the confidence of the North in the disposition of the people of the South.  There was, and could be, no possible intelligent motive for the masses of the South to change their form of government, or to enter into rebellion against it.  The arguments of the plotters of treason against a ’government of majorities’—­the doctrine of ‘State rights,’ with the right to secede at the option of a State—­the quasi repudiation of the ‘white trash,’ so called, as an element of political equality, were regarded as the ebullitions of a politically vitiated class who would be willing to overthrow the National Government, but who were supposed to be too few in numbers to taint with poisonous fatality the political mind of the South.  It is not established as yet that the Southern political mind in the main has become depraved.  It is, however, established, that the leading political influences South have cajoled and terrorized the bulk of the Southern population into apparent acquiescence in treason.  It yet remains to be seen what disposition will be disclosed by the Southern people, as soon as protection is guaranteed to them against the tyranny and usurpations of the rebel influence.  It is prophesied that there will be found a heart in the bulk of the Southern population; that it will still cling with affection and pride to that government which was their guarantee, and which no power now on earth is competent to shake.  It is not against the deluded, the timid, or the helpless of the South that we would make the indictment for political crime.  It is the perfidious pro-slavery spirit in politics that we seek to arraign.