Confederate States Of America (2005)

What's wrong about this photo? Or if you're a true-born Southerner, what's right?

While scanning through some of the up and coming movies in 2005, I ran across this intriguing title; "CSA: Confederate States of America (2005)". It's an "alternate universe" take on what would the country be like had the South won the civil war.

Suffice to say anything from Hollywood on this topic is sure to to bring about all sorts of controversial ideas and discussions. I was surprised that they are approaching such subject matter, and I'm more than a little interested.

For myself, I was more than pleased with the homage paid to General "Stonewall" Jackson in Turner's "Gods and Generals". Like him, I should have like to believe that the South would have been compelled to end slavery out of Christian dignity rather than continue to enslave their brothers of the freedom that belong equally to all men. Obviously it didn't happen that way.

Would I fight for a South that believed in Slavery today? I have to ask first, would I know any better back then? I don't know. I honestly don't know. My pride for my South and my heritage would have most likely doomed me as it did so many others. I won't skirt the issue, in all likelyhood, slavery may have been an afterthought. Had they been the staple of what I considered property, I possibly would have already been past the point of moral struggle on the point and preparing to kill Northern invaders.

So what do I feel about this? The photo above nearly brings me to tears, as I highly respect Abraham Lincoln. I don't care if they kick me out of the South. Imagine if GW was in prayer over what to do about a seperatist leftist California. That's how I imagine Lincoln. A great man. I wonder sometimes what my family would have been like today. How many more of us would there be? Would we have held onto the property and prosperity that sustained them before the war? Would I have double the amount of family in the area? How many would I have had to cook for last week for Christmas? Would I have needed to make more "Pate De Fois Gras"?

Well, dunno about that either. Depending on what the previous for this movie are like, I may or may not see it. If they portray it as the United Confederacy of the KKK I won't be attending.

This generation of our clan speaks some 5 languages in addition to English, those being of recent immigrants to this nation. All of them are good Americans. I believe the south would have succombed to the same forces that affected the North. Immigration, war, economics and other huma forces that have changed the map of the world since history began.

Whatever. At least in this alternate universe, it's safe for me to believe that we would have grown to be the benevolent and humane South that I know it is in my heart. I can believe that slavery would have died shortly before or after that lost victory. I can believe that Southern gentlemen would have served the world as the model for behavior. In my alternate universe, it's ok that Spock has a beard. It's my alternate universe after all, it can be what I want.

At any rate, I lived up North for many years. Wonderful people and difficult people. I will always sing their praises as a land full of beautiful Italian girls, maple syrup and Birch beer. My uncle ribbed us once before we left on how we were going up North to live "with all the Yankees". Afterwards I always refered to him as royalty. He is, really. He's "King of the Rednecks". I suppose I'm his court jester.

LINK

The Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress
Series 1. General Correspondence. 1833-1916.
James Mitchell to Abraham Lincoln, May 18, 1862 (Pamphlet)

LETTER
ON THE RELATION OF
THE WHITE AND AFRICAN RACES
IN
THE UNITED STATES
SHOWING THE NECESSITY OF THE
COLONIZATION OF THE LATTER

ADDRESSED TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S. WASHINGTON
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
1862

MAY 18, 1862

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His Excellency ABRAHAM LINCOLN,

SIR: The conviction of this nation being wide-spread, and becoming more general each day, that the peace and prosperity of the country and the permanency of our republican civilization, require a separation of the colored or negro race from us, suggests that the statesmen whose duty it is, from time to time, to reflect in their legislative movements such public sentiment as is well grounded and correct, should now assume and fix firmly in the national policy on this subject such fundamental principles of action as will prove lights and guides to the men who in after ages shall be obliged to meet and battle with difficulties like those you have encountered; for the experience of the past shows that the future is fraught with danger to the peace of this country. The calamity that now rests upon us had long been foreseen and deprecated by the wise and reflecting men of the past generation, and untiring efforts have been made to avoid them by many of the men of this. But the mass of the nation would not heed the words of warning; they abandoned themselves to the lead of our enemies, foreign and domestic; hence this storm of blighting war. Yet, terrible as is this civil war between men of kindred race for the dominion of the servant, future history will show that it has been moderate and altogether tolerable when contrasted with a struggle between the black and white race, which, within the next one or two hundred years must sweep over this nation, unless the wise and prudent statesmen of this generation avert it. In that struggle the issue will be the existence of the weaker race, and we must not flatter ourselves that the most numerous, in all localities, will be the white race.

Permit us, then, to ask you aid and influence to induce the people of this Republic, through their National and State governments, to make a speedy, energetic, and uniform move through all their courts of legislation, all their means of influence and agencies of political power, to produce the separation of those races, the removal of the colored race to a proper locality, and establishment in independence there. Surely this exercise of influence is a legitimate prerogative of the Chief Magistrate, the guardian of national peace, who, being convinced of impending danger to the country, has the undoubted right to notify the nation

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of its approach, and recommend the remedy. Being grateful for the positions you have assumed, and the recommendations you have made, we herein respectfully submit a few reflections intended to sustain (thought feeble may be the effort) the policy proposed, and asking that, so long as God grants you place and power at the head of this great nation, you will continue to this subject the cure its magnitude merits and our national dangers demand.

The rebellion that is not shaking the foundation of the nation, is the struggle of Imperialism to establish itself in a republican land. Imperialism, the government of the many by the few, the dominion of unchecked, despotic will, is one of the curses resulting from man's apostacy. For ages it has been regarded as a necessary evil amongst men - a thing of Divine appointment - and the fortunate incumbents of this power, for long centuries, have sheltered themselves behind this opinion, and strengthened themselves in this conviction. Nor are they altogether without authority in this; for, as despotic rule is a curse, we must admit that instruments for its infliction have been permitted.

Republicanism, on the other hand, is a deliverance from this curse of despotic rule - and the law is supreme - meteing out equal protection and equal justice. Such was the plan of our republicanism as projected by the fathers of the nation; such has been the practice of most of the communities embraced within the broad field of the Republic; but in other sections of the land a different economy prevailed and continues to prevail; an imperialism of a circumscribed character has been practised, which necessarily saps the foundation of republicanism and educates the people to imperial rule. This has been the source of our danger, and in this manifest weakness the imperialists of Europe have found the greatest temptation to tamper with our prosperity and integrity.

Our danger in the future arises from the fact that we have 4,500,000 persons, who, whilst amongst us, cannot be of us - persons of a different race, forming necessarily a distinct interest; the germ of a distinct political power, not now fully disclosed but to be disclosed in future ages; and from the fact that the government applied to those people is not republican, but anti-republican, having many of the imperial marks about it, the toleration of which has educated many

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of our people to look with favor on a radical change of our republican institutions.

The social and civil evils resulting from the presence of the negro race are numerous, and their magnitude can be better discovered by the stranger than the victims of the calamity.

Amongst them we rank first and most destructive to the purity and simplicity of society - which strikes deeper at the root of good order, and mines most effectually the foundations of that citadel of national stability, the family - the license of the races, which is giving to this continent a nation of bastards. No apology can be given for this; none will be received by the Great Ruler; he will punish for this with fearful severity. It should not be concealed from the authorities of the land, and the parties interested should not be permitted to disguise the criminal fact, that the most immoral maxims are retained amongst this people, and made the justification of crime in this regard - all predicated on the hope of the colored race to rise by the illicit absorption of their blood into the mass of this nation. Time and again has this hope been expressed in our hearing, and as often denounced as the source and cause of crime. That political economist must be blind indeed; that statesman must be a shallow thinker, who cannot see a fearful future before this country, if the production of this mixed race is not checked by removal. So sure as time sweeps on, giving intelligence, members, strength, and more corrupt European blood to this class, so sure the period will come when this mixed population will assume the offensive, and possibly the next great civil war will be the conflict of this race for dominion and existence. It is strange, passing strange, that our moralists will not look this part of the matter in the face, and shape their precepts accordingly.

The second social evil, we rank the production of strife in the church courts of our land, and the damage to Christian faith resulting therefrom.

The third is our civil contentions, which are now threatening our national existence; the second precedes the third, and must always go hand and hand with it. The war of words and opinions always precedes the clash of arms. Take a review of the past twenty years; the men of the North, actuated no doubt by benevolence, demanded reforms in the clear and well known abuses resulting from the presence of the negro. The questions were introduced into the

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church courts; the reforms advocated and agitated, not always in correct temper; the controllers of this undesirable population took the alarm; they sought refuge in Scripture precedents; northern resolutions and sermons were met by southern resolutions and sermons; each section succeeded in manufacturing a public opinion and conscience adverse to the other; indeed, much of the fearful responsibility of this scene of blood rests on the hierarchies of the sections. Very soon the contest passed from the church courts to the legislative halls; antagonistic laws were enacted, and States, as such, were arrayed against each other; finally, the conflict passed from the forum into the field, and there we are trying to decide the first great military struggle - but we fear not the last, arising from the presence of the negro race - demonstrating that this population is in the way of the peace of the country, the cause of immorality and misrule.

Thus far we have found that their presence here disturbs our social structure. We come now to examine how far our civil structure is damaged by this population.

As a nation we claim to be a republic, and for our institutions we claim that they are republican. We mean thereby that this nation is anti-despotic, and our institutions guarantee equal rights to all our citizens - equal protection to all under our jurisdiction. Such is the theory; but what is the practice? We hold within our limits four millions and a half of negroes, most of them slaves, under a worse form of bondage than was that of Russia. In the latter case the religion and domestic rights of the servant are respected; in the former they are disregarded in the legal provision of many slave communities. Here, in our opinion, lies the great crime of American slavery; not so much in requiring the servant to work without a fixed compensation as in disregarding the law of God; in discrediting the domestic relations of husband and wife, parent and child - which are ordinances of Heaven, that no community may disregard without bringing Divine judgments on itself - this with forbidding the use of letters to the slave, making God's word a sealed book, are crimes of the first magnitude, all resulting from the disposition to hold those people here for profit and gain. Can such an institution be cherished within a republic? We think not. However, with the relation of master and slave the inhabitants of the free States have agreed not to interfere, for the constitution must be observed

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strictly. But there is one clause of this sacred compact which requires the Federal government to "guarantee to the several States a republican form of government." Those few words, in our opinion, form the true constitutional instrument or article, which, when rightly rendered and applied as a test to State constitutions and institutions, will free all the States under the compact from this corrupting institution of African slavery. When rightly construed it must and will require the gradual removal of such anti-republican elements and peoples as cannot be engrafted on the national stock; especially when it is found that those anti-republican elements and peoples have long been regarded by the diplomats in the interest of imperialism as the fulcrum on which to rest the lever designed to overturn our whole civil structure and rend us into fragments. As a nation we are learning wisdom by the things we suffer.

The history of the great rebellion is not yet complete; the unseen influences which have produced it are not fully disclosed; but the dim outline begins to take form and place, so that the true friends and actual enemies of the Republic will soon be discovered, and each receive the place in history that infamy or honor may award. When the work is complete, when the last act in the great and fearful drama shall have been closed, it will be found that our country has been the victim of a conspiracy, the magnitude of which is without a parallel in the history of nations - though wicked, yet rendered grand through the combination of potent and princely influences arrayed, and to be arrayed, against us, because of the issues in question, and the result of the conflict - issues of no local character, but involving the fate of that system of government known in contradistinction to imperial rule as republicanism.

It is admitted on all hands that our mixed and servile population constitute the root of those issues and quarrels; what shall be done with them is the question of the hour. Suppose the relation of master and slave abolished throughout the nation, what is the new relation you will give the freed men of the slave country? This is the question which requires solution. When the relation of master and slave ceases to exist - as cease it will in time - what shall be the rights and franchises wherewith you will endow and vest the 4,000,000 freed men of the South?

To this one class of statesmen answer, we will grant them equal franchise, social and civil, and thus incorporate

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them into the body of the nation; we will Africanize, and thus remove the difficulties in the way of our republicanism. I have yet to learn that any respectable statesman has dared to assume this position, or that any large or influential body of men have attempted to defend political measures based on this system of assimilation. We are free to admit that such a system of assimilation or amalgamation is necessary, provided you will to retain those people here, under the jurisdiction of our republican form of government; nay, we maintain, that our fundamental laws demand equal rights to all our citizens. This is a cardinal principle that cannot be ignored; the name and claim are empty unless we extend those rights. To extend them, is to open every social and civil avenue to this African mass: the office, the legislative hall, the family; to pour the blood of near five million Africans into the veins of the Republic, and that, too, in the face of the most solemn protests of the sections most to be affected by this repulsive admixture of blood - the country drained by the Mississippi - the border free and slave States of the West, who think they deserve better things of their brethren of the East than an attempt to engraft the African race on their country as a permanent population. It should be known to the men of the East that the fear of having African blood engrafted on the future population of the great valley, is becoming a formidable power at the West; it has nerved the arms of thousands in this conflict; it has said to the slave despots, "you shall not Africanize this land," the heritage of our children; and what it has said in tones of thunder, and written in blood-stained characters with pointed steel, it clothes in subdued tones and words of warning to the men of the Exeter Hall school, who, far removed from the scene of danger, see not the degradation of this admixture of race.

Let the friend of English views, the disciple of Exeter hall, approach one of these western men and attempt to reason with him on the subject; he may tell him that it is not in keeping with the spirit of the age to exclude the African race from the rights and privileges of the Republic. He will answer that his social and civil structure was made for white men, not for black men; that he is opposed to social equality with the negro, and therefore opposed to the civil equality of such people with him, because social equality is a condition of society wherein each member,

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however dissimilar his circumstances in life to those of his neighbor, may attain by industry or fortune to that very social position which his neighbor holds; that this condition of social equality is predicated on civil or political equality, for there an be no social equality without it, such a supposition is absurd; that the government of his country is republican, and as such required a homogeneous population, and that republicanism is applicable to such and such alone - a people in which each man is essentially the equal of his neighbor; that by a homogeneous population he means no this color or that color, but a population that can and will amalgamate on legal and honorable terms; that he does not choose to regard the negro as his equal, and if disposed to regard him as his equal in mind and worth, he does not choose to endanger the blood of his posterity by the proximity of such a population; that here is no command in the Word of God that will oblige him to place this race on the high road to such an amalgamation with his family; and if not with his family, not with that mass of families he calls a State. He will say that a family, and that collection of families which constitute his State, have the right, beyond all organic law, to say who shall or who shall not be received into their bosom and made members of their society; that the American people, in the exercise of this right, have admitted the white races, because they could amalgamate such on legal and honorable terms, whilst they rejected the black because they could not or would not amalgamate on legal or honorable terms. He will point to the recorded opinion of the Supreme tribunal of the nation as to citizenship. He will tell you that he is a sovereign on the soil he treads, and as such has as good a right to protect the purity of his blood in future ages as has the sovereign of England, and to enact laws thereto. Nothing but the authority of the Divine law will change his purpose to hedge himself in and erect legal protections against this possible admixture of blood, which he sees endangers the peace of society more than the intermarriage of England's royal heir with plebeian line.

The student of Exeter Hall may then, with self complacency, point toe corruption of blood where slavery is cherished. And what has he accomplished by that? He rouses the pride of his antagonist, causing him to hate slavery all the more, and we much mistake his character if he does not answer with the emphasis of indignation. Where men are truly moral and religious, the white and

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black races do not mix, so that the influence of religion will never effect fusion, or destroy the right of choice in the parties. All attempts to destroy this right of choice for himself or his family he will regard as an aggression, and repel with feeling, which if provoked by constant irritation and factious opposition to his local interests, can summon armed aid. Hence I have said we are destined to see other wars in the conflict of races, unless wisdom becomes our guide.

I trust my fears in this regard are not well grounded; but let the stranger go amongst the people of the West and South, as I have done, and propose any other plan of meliorating the unfortunate condition of the free man of color than that of removal to an independent home, and the mass of the people will regard him with more than jealously. What is it gives the hate and ranchor, the venom and the ire to this wicked rebellion amongst the poorer classes of the South? It is love for the negro? No, but it is the hatred of those who would engraft, as they say, negro blood on the population of their country. All such they call by what to them is the sum of all evil, abolitionists - showing that they confound the anti-slavery men of all schools, who are not out-spoken colonizationists, with that small class of northern theorists who defend amalgamation. What is it that causes the free masses of the West to mutter suppressed displeasure and threats, such as have been often heard, against their brethren of the New England States, when the negro question is discussed? It is this ill-defined fear that New England aims at engrafting negro blood on the masses of the Mississippi valley, by embarrassing the colonization and separation movement, as has been their habit. We must, therefore, rank this now latent Eastern and Western feeling of sectional hate, which only slumbers because of a traverse antagonism, as an additional evil because of the presence of those people.

We must regard the extension of equal social and civil rights to this class of persons as distasteful to the mass of the nations; the majority will never submit to it; and attempt to enforce it will lead to restlessness and trouble in the West; nor will citizens made in the East for western or southern use, answer a wise and peaceful purpose. This ends the remedy of the first class of statesmen; it falls short of the evil it proposed to remove - it does not bring national quiet.

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A second class come in and propose a restricted franchise for the freed men of the country: Let them remain laborers and pay them for their labor; they will make you a valuable peasantry, say our English friends of the court end of London; you can employ them through all coming time; it is not necessary nor desirable to endow them with the rights of republicanism; see our fine peasantry; en England and Ireland, but few, if any of them, vote; but few, if any of them, hold read estate; it is not necessary that they should. Why not construct such a peasantry out of your freed men?

Our English friends, and those on this side who follow their views, "will never choose to comprehend the nature of our republican society and institutions," which can no more tolerate or accommodate a disfranchised peasant class, that it can accommodate a slave class; they forget, or affect to forget, that slaves and peasants deprived of the right of citizenship, and suffering social degradation, are incompatible with the genius of our republicanism. A disfranchised peasant class is essential to an aristocracy, or a monarchy; it is one of the appendages of imperialism; there could be no lords, or nobles, unless there were ignoble serfs and peasants; these must exist as a substrata on which to rear the higher orders and classes of society in a monarchy - sweep them away, and imperialism, in all its forms, falls to the ground; advocate their establishment, and so far you advocate the overthrow of republicanism and the establishment of imperialism.

One of the admitted necessities of a country covered by a classified or heterogeneous population, is a strong central government, with restricted franchise; privileged ruling families; strong military arm; the governing power going down from the head or throne, not as with us, up from the people. This is the actual condition of the States now in rebellion - the condition to which they have been drifting for years. Their manifest policy is to centralize the governing power in the hands of the few. Remove that few by special chartered rights above the laboring masses, and then govern by a strong military pressure, if necessary; this, in our opinion, is the overthrow of republicanism and the establishment of imperialism.

It is time it was known to the American people that this ruin of republicanism and establishment of imperialism is the condition of society which many of the rulers of the

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Old World wish to superinduce on this continent, but especially on this nation, for therein the courts of Europe see the sure and lasting guarantee of the perpetuity of their own imperial rule. To assure monarchy in Europe and extend its dominion down to the indefinite future, all that is necessary is to revolutionize our republican society and engraft privileged classes on us, which will surely end in a throne; for the heads of privileged families will quarrel amongst themselves, unless regulated by a supreme chief or president, who always end by assuming the crown.

Well do the nobility of England know that the negro race constitute the vulnerable point in our republicanism; some of them understand the embarrassments of our situation as well as we do ourselves. They know that we cannot make republican citizens out of our negro population. Having thus shadowed the two theories of the English school in what we have already said, let us note their management of "the American question," to our prejudice and well-nigh our ruin.

The management of this most dangerous question in American policy, though unworthy a Christian State, does honor to the political skill of the oligarchy, the finger of whose diplomacy has intermeddled with the business, the interests, and fate of every nation known, and which this day permits no rival people or power to rise without earnest efforts to retard, restrict, or to destroy.

The early statesmen of this nation saw more distinctly than their successors the dangers arising from two incompatible races in the same country, and foresaw the fearful conflicts that must result from their contact. Actuated alike by policy and humanity, they resolved to enter on the gradual emancipation of the slave and the separation of the races. So soon as the friends of human liberty in the country had defined this plan of emancipation, connected with the removal or colonization of the freed men beyond the limits of our Republic, just so soon did the men of England object, and present other plans to our American philanthropists of a widely different character, not suited to the structure of republican institutions. The English plans and theories were enforced by the exercise of all the moral and personal influence that the upper classes of that empire could bring to bear on the subject. The effect was to divide our good men amongst themselves; divide their plans, divide their influence. We were thus divided, whilst the people

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of England were a unit. They had but one cardinal plan for us, and that was to fasten this people permanently on the soil of our country. "Emancipation on the soil" was their watch cry, and the creation of a colored peasantry out of the freed men. To enforce this plan upon us two agencies were used, the Puritan and the Cavalier; the first addressed himself to the North, the last to the South. The thunders of Exeter Hall were directed upon us, and made echo and re-echo over hill and dale of our wide-spread land. The English plans were enforced by the pulpit, and the press-printed matter, and the agencies of lecturers, together with appeals to the ecclesiastical bodies of our land, and by what was more remarkable, the open mission of a member of the British parliament, who came to aid in the work of division and distraction, but especially for the prostration of all schemes of relief.

Those English agencies found a ready people amongst the polished thinkers, the benevolent and philosophic minds of cold and calm New England, who sometimes see a man of color, just enough of this to call up the well springs of benevolence, and exercise the feelings peculiar to the well ordered brotherhood of man. Here an English party and an English interest found a lodgement. Parker, Philips, and others, uttered the watch cry of opposition to the separation of the races; they talked of abstract rights and privileges peculiar to the denizens of the great domains; they loved the negro so much and well, they would plant the dusky mass permanently amongst the people of the East! Oh, no! But amongst the people of the southwest; notwithstanding the most earnest and emphatic protests of the States in that locality.

Thus the plot thickened and the controversy grew warm. New England went with the men of Exeter Hall, whilst the central communities, most endangered by an admixture of blood, advocate the removal of the negro on such terms as would be agreeable to all. This interest found its most able advocates in the Middle States and the Mississippi valley. Amongst the chief advocates of this policy, stood that true representative of American statesmen, Henry Clay; but he and his friends had a third powerful party, or interest to resist. The fragments of the old tory party, entrenched in South Carolina, under the lead of John C. Calhoun, and those who sympathized with him in other Southern States; the advocates of a colored peasantry

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Under bonds of perpetual servitude; the men of the Gulf school took advantage of the division in the ranks of the emancipationists, and whilst they were rendered impotent by their differences as to plans, those advocates of perpetual slavery moulded the southern mind to suit themselves, and proclaimed the Divinity of slavery; and under the inspiration of European imperialism, established the dogma, that the few have a right to rule, and that it is the duty of the toiling millions to obey.

By both these extreme interests the horrors of expatriation were proclaimed and denounced. It will be remembered that when Mr. Clay, at the request of some of his friends, wrote a letter to Judge Robinson, showing the necessity of a separation of the races as a measure of national policy, the Exeter Hall men were sadly outraged, and the London press covered him with reproach; whilst the court end of London, and the American planting interest sneered at the folly of expatriating our labor; notwithstanding they knew that Europe was giving this country an adequate supply of labor, for all purposes of national prosperity and wealth, and at this hour we have more than we can employ.

General Taylor, when he assumed the government, was moved to do and say something in the same direction. It will be remembered he recommended a revision of the laws relating to the slave trade, so as to admit of colonization on the west coast of Africa, giving his influence to the well remembered "Ebony Line," a line of transports designed to carry colored persons to Africa. On disclosing this policy and its discussion in this country, the men of England dispatched the Hon. George Thompson, member of the British House of Commons for Tower Hamblets, to this country to abuse the advocates and friends of this measure; and well he performed his work. He called the plan of separation a venerable humbug, and could find no terms too offensive for its advocates. This was his second visit; he had visited this country in 1839; those visits had no other object but to divide the thinkers of this land, the philanthropists of this much distracted country, on the question of emancipation, and prostrate all schemes for the removal of the blacks, who he knew, and his masters knew, stood more in the way of our country's peace and progress, than any other human obstacle. Well did Mr. Thompson know, well did his masters, the diplomats of the British empire know, that we

LINK

The Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress
Series 1. General Correspondence. 1833-1916.
James Mitchell to Abraham Lincoln, May 18, 1862 (Pamphlet)

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Could not make republican citizens out of our 3,000,000 negroes, (now 4,500,000,) and remain free from faction and from strife. What did they require of us then? What do they demand of us now? No only that the colored race shall be emancipated - a matter for which all our good men pray; but they required more. Exeter Hall was the agent of the demand, and the good and true, yet deluded men of New England, endorsed the bill, asking retention on the soil after the act of emancipation should take place, unaccompanied with colonization, unattended with separation. We see that the London press has again opened its batteries on the colonization plan of this government, and we shall not wonder if they make it one of the counts in their new bill of indictment. May God be our help and guide, for we have embarrassments enough.

It is presumed that the men of the Mississippi valley, and the loyal men of the South, can look calmly on such a demand as places side by side with their children a nation of blacks 4,500,000 strong, soon to double and quadruple, with the dark and fearful prospect of a strife of race, and a possible corruption of blood in future generations, and sure changes in the civil institutions of this country in future years? Can it be supposed, with reason, that they will regard with indifference those men far removed in their northern or island homes, from possible contact with this undesirable population, who sneer at the dread and alarm of those sons of our Angle-Saxon line located in the west and southwest, who fear the future and would avert its dangers?

Thus wrought England at the North; but equally potent has she been with the men of the South. She has a man for every work and every interest. Nor did it require so much effort to mould the opinions of the South. Her nobility and titled classes have always found strong supporters in South Carolina, amongst the remnants of the old tory families. Those lordly planters were always in good odor with the nobility of England. The leaders of the Gulf school no doubt received assurances of sympathy. Revenue laws, tariff regulations, federal customs and duties, were regarded by both these parties as oppressive exactions not to be endured, but to be disregarded and nullified; that thereby the bands of mutual friendship might be drawn closer, to result in a substantial and lasting reunion. In South Carolina England's royal interest and aristocratic pride were enshrined with a hope of future resurrection. For eighty years they slumbered.

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It was but a slumber; the germ of future life was there. The petulance, the bursts of passion, the flippant talk of disunion, the actual effort in the days of Jackson, all betray a hope, a dependence on some outside power, some stay and support in the hour of need. Carefully was this fostered and slowly has it matured under the skilful hand of J. C. Calhoun and his followers, whilst the smiles and promises of British nobles, like the genial sun, has caused the royal crop to grow. Dr. Russell came to the south as George Thompson came to the North, the aid and advocate of an oppressed people, the friend of the gentlemen of the Gulf States; the truthful reporter of their virtues, their wrongs and injuries; the reflector of noble patronage and promiser of ribbons, stars and coronets. Under his able hand the royal crop became rapidly ripe, and with care he trained upwards its young shoots of revolutionary ambition. But the Trent case spoiled all his calculations; he and his masters were baffled for the time by the prudence and wisdom of the Administration, and the few men in London who are really our friends.

George Thompson and Dr. Russell are representative men of their class - puritan and cavalier - but whether puritan or cavalier, always English, intensely English, always anti-American, and dictatorial to their kinsmen of the Western hemisphere.

The tories of the South, and the men of Exeter Hall, unite in their opposition to the removal of the negro from very different reasons; but so far as the result is concerned, it serves the aim and end of British diplomats to distract and divide our plans and measures of national relief.

Such in our opinion is the plot of this conspiracy, to which the Emperor of the French, we fear, has lately lent such secret aid and direction as to become the master of the storm; and that, too, in contravention of the three great potent spells of his hitherto successful policy - non-intervention, universal suffrage, and the unity of nationalities, or races, with which he has brought the nations of the old world to his feet. We trust that it is now evident to him that the issues in our controversy, if disturbed by Eastern diplomacy, must become Eastern questions too; for the nations must and will examine the causes and reasons for our policy and conduct; whilst it is well known that American theories are dangerous to all systems of imperialism.

But to return. The American people, the victims of this

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management, abandoned themselves to the lead of two schools in policy, both, so far as the negro is concerned, driving in different ways at the same result - that of making the negro a permanent occupant of the Republic, as a dis-franchised laborer, or serf, with the sure corruption of republicanism as a result.

The best and most philosophic view we have seen of the Southern plans and schemes, is that presented by L.W. Spratt, published in the Charleston Mercury, of February 13th, 1861, part of which we will not quote in justification of the charge made above, that the South aims at a change of our republican government, and desire the introduction of a privileged ruling class, possibly a monarchy. Throughout this strong, strange, and bold letter, we find the doctrines of those who call for a strong government - the government of the few, and the disfranchisement of the many. The following is his truly philosophic view of the situation:

"The South is now in the formation of a slave republic. This, perhaps, is not admitted generally. There are many contented to believe that the South, as a geographical section, is in mere assertion of its independence; that it is instinct with no especial truth - pregnant of no distinct social nature; that for some unaccountable reason the two sections have become opposed to each other; that for reasons equally insufficient, there is disagreement between the peoples that direct them; and that from no overruling necessity, no impossibility of co-existence, but as a mere matter of policy, it has been considered best for the South to strike out for herself and establish an independence of her own. This, I fear, is an inadequate conception of the controversy. The contest is not between the North and South as geographical sections - for between such sections, merely, there can be no contest; nor between the people of the North and the people of the South, for our relations have been pleasant, and on neutral grounds there is nothing to estrange us. We eat together, trade together, and practice yet, in intercourse, with great respect, the courtesies of common life. But the real contest is between the two forms of society which have become established, the one at the North and the other at the South. Society is essentially different from government; as different as is the nut from the bur, or the nervous body of the shell-fish from the bony structure which surrounds it; and within this government two societies had become developed as variant in structure

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and distinct in form as any two beings in animated nature. The one is a society composed of one race - the other of two races. The one is bound together but by the two great social relations of husband and wife, and parent and child; the other by the three relations of husband and wife, and parent and child, and master and slave. The one embodies in its political structure the principle that equality is the right of man - the other that it is the right of equals only. The one, embodying the principle that equality is the right of man, expands upon the horizontal plane of pure democracy; the other, embodying the principle that it is not the right of man, but of equals only, has taken to itself the rounded form of a social aristocracy; in the one there is hireling labor, in the other slave labor; in the one, therefore, in theory, at least, labor is voluntary; in the other involuntary; in the labor of the one there is the elective franchise, in the other there is not; and, as labor is always in excess of direction, in the one the power of government is only with the lower classes, in the other the upper; in the one therefore, the reins of government come from the heels, in the other from the head, of the society; in the one it is guided by the worst, in the other by the best, intelligence; in the one it is from those who have the least, in the other from those who have the greatest, stake in the continuance of existing order; in the one the pauper laborer has power to rise and appropriate, by law, the goods protected by the State - when pressure comes, as come it must, there will be the motive to exert it - and thus the ship of State turns bottom upwards; in the other there is no pauper labor with power of rising; the ship of State has the ballast of a disfranchised class; there is no possibility of political upheaval, therefore, and it is reasonably certain that, so steadied, it will sail erect, and onward, to an indefinitely distant period. Such are some of the more obvious differences in form and constitution between these two sections which had come to contact within the limits of the recent Union. And perhaps it is not the least remarkable in this connection, that while the one, a shapeless, organless, mere mass of social elements in no definite relation to each other, is loved and eulogized, and stands the ideal of age, the other comely and proportioned with labor and direction, mind and matter in just relation to each other, presenting analogy to the very highest developments in animated nature, is condemned and reprobated. Even we ourselves have hardly ventured to

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affirm it, while the cocks crow, in fact, are ready to deny it; and if it shall not perish on the cross of human judgment, it must be for the reason that the Great Eternal has not purposed that still another agent of his will shall come to such excess of human ignominy.

"Such are the two forms of society which had come to contest within the structure of the recent Union. And the contest for existence was inevitable. Neither could concur in the requisitions of the other; neither could expand within the forms of a single government, without encroachment on the other. Like two lobsters in a single shell, if such a thing were possible, the natural expansion of the one must be inconsistent with the existence of the other. Or, like an eagle and a fish, joined by an indissoluble bond - which, for no reason of its propriety, could act together, where the eagle could not share the fluid suited to the fish and live - where the fish could not share the fluid suited to the bird and live - and where one must perish that the other may survive, unless the unnatural union shall be severed, -- so these societies could not, if they would, concur. The principal that races are unequal, and that among unequals inequality is right, would have been destructive to the form of pure democracy at the North. The principle that all men are equal and equally right, would have been destructive of slavery at the South. Each required the element suited to its social nature. Each must strive to make the government expressive of its social nature. The natural expansion of the one must become encroachment on the other, and so the contest was inevitable. Seward and Lincoln, in theory at least, whatever be their aim, are right. I realized the fact and so declared the conflict irrepressible years before either ventured to advance that proposition. Upon that declaration I have always acted, and the recent experience of my country has not induced me to question the correctness of that first conception. Nor is indignation at such leaders becoming the statesmen at the South. The tendency of social action was against us. The speaker, to be heard, must speak against slavery; the preacher, to retain his charge, must preach against slavery; the author, to be read, must write against slavery; the office-holder, to continue, must redeem the pledges of the candidate. They did not originate the policy, but they pandered to it; they did not start the current, they but floated on it, and

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were as powerless as drift-wood to control its course. The great tendency to social conflict pre-existed; it was in the heart of the North - it was in the very structure of Northern society. It was not a matter of choice but of necessity, that such society should disaffirm a society in contradiction of it. It was not a matter of choice but of necessity that it should approve of acts against it. In possession of power, it flowed to political action on the south, as fluids flow to lower levels. The acts of individuals were unimportant. It I had possessed the power to change the mind of every republican in Congress, I would not have been at pains to do so. They would but have fallen before an indignant constituency, and men would have been sent to their places whose minds could never change. Nor in fact, have they been without their uses. As the conflict was irrepressible; as they were urged on by an inexorable power, it was important we should know it. Our own political leaders refused to realize the fact. The zealots of the North alone could force the recognition; and I am bound to own that Giddings and Greeley and Seward and Lincoln, parasites as they are, panderers to popular taste as they are, the instruments, and the mere instruments, of aggression, have done more to rouse us to the vindication of our rights than the bravest and the best amongst us.

"Such, then, was the nature of this contest. It was inevitable. It was inaugurated with the government. It began at the beginning, and almost at the start, the chances of the game were turned against us. If the foreign slave trade had never been suppressed, slave society must have triumphed. It extended to the limits of New England, pari passu; with emigrants from Europe came slaves from Africa. Step by step the two in union marched upon the West, and it is reasonably certain, had the means to further union been admitted, that so they would have continued to march upon the West; that slave labor would have been cheaper than hireling labor; that transcending agriculture, it would have expanded to the arts, and that thus, one homogeneous form of labor, and one homogeneous form of society - unquestioned by one single dreamer, and cherished at home and honored abroad - would have overspread the entire available surface of the late United States. But the slave trade suppressed, democratic society has triumphed. The States of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware found an attractive market for their slaves. They

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found a cheaper pauper labor to replace it - that pauper labor poured in from Europe; while it replaced the slave, it increased the political power of the Northern States. More than 5,000,000 from abroad have been added to their number; that addition has enabled them to grasp and hold the government. That government, from the very necessities of their nature, they are forced to use against us. Slavery was within its grasp, and forced to the option of extinction in the Union, or of independence out, it dares to strike, and it asserts its claim to nationality, and its right to recognition among the leading social systems of the world.

"Such, then, being the nature of the contest, this Union has been disrupted in the effort of slave society to emancipate itself; and the momentous question now to be determined is, shall that effort be successful. That the republic of the South shall sustain her independence, there is little question. The form of our society is too pregnant of intellectual resources, and military strength, to be subdued, if in its products, it did not hold the bonds of amity and peace upon all the leading nations of the world. But in the independence of the South is there surely the emancipation of domestic slavery? That is greatly to be doubted. Our property in slaves will be established. If it has stood in a government, more than half of which has been pledged to its destruction, it will surely stand in a government, every member of which will be pledged to its defence. But will it be established as a normal institution of society, and stand the sole exclusive social system of the South? That is the impending question, and the fact is yet to be recorded. That it will so stand somewhere at the south, I do not entertain the slightest question. It may be overlooked or disregarded now. It has been the vital agent of this great controversy. It has energized the arm of every man who acts a part in this great drama. We may shrink from recognition of the fact; we may decline to admit the source of our authority; refuse to slavery an invitation to the table which she herself has so bountifully spread; but not for that will it remain powerless, or unhonored. It may be abandoned by Virginia, Maryland, Missouri; South Carolina herself may refuse to espouse it. The hireling laborer from the North and Europe may drive it from our seaboard. As the South shall become the centre of her own trade, the metropolis of her own commerce, the pauper population of the world will pour

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upon us. It may replace our slaves upon the seaboard, as it has replaced them in the Northern States; but concentrated in the States upon the Gulf it will make its stand; condensed to the point at which the labor of the slave transcends the wants of agriculture, it will flow to other objects; it will lay its giant grasp upon still other departments of industry; its every step will be exclusive; it will be unquestioned lord of each domain on which it enters. With that perfect economy of resources, that just application of power, that concentration of forces, that security of order which results to slavery from the permanent direction of its best intelligence, there is no other form of human labor that can stand against it, and it will build itself a home, and erect for itself, at some point within the present limits of the Southern States, a structure of imperial power and grandeur - a glorious Confederacy of States that will stand aloft and serene for ages amid the anarchy of democracies that will reel around it.

"But it may be, that to this end, another revolution may be necessary. It is to be apprehended that this contest between democracy and slavery is not yet over."

Such are the prescriptions and views of those advocates of anti-American theory. Is it wonderful that the life of the Commonwealth has been placed in jeopardy, and that this day we are undergoing the throes of exhausting civil war? Does it require further proof that we have been partly the victims of others, and partly in the position of the mariner without chart or compass, who vainly tries to reach the haven without a plan or policy? Is it strange that British statesmen, from their distant standpoint, saw this convulsion for many years approaching, and spoke of our troubles with the assurance of prophets. Did they not "foresee, because they foreknew?"

If England is truly our friend, she has now a golden opportunity to disclose it. Let her people withdraw their opposition to the colonization of our blacks; let her open up the way for their settlement in Central America; continue to foster Liberia; manifest more sympathy for our work of making republican freemen, and less for making disfranchised peasants; more for men who are their own masters, and less for those who lord it over the servant; more for the men who make their own laws and rulers, and less for those who rule by divine right - provided such a thing is possible in a people who can see no political wisdom outside the British constitution, which provides for the three great

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estates, king, lords, and commons - then will we believe her friendship sincere. We are not forgetful of the palliating fact, that her press and statesmen cannot, dare not, discuss the true reasons why the American people must colonize the negro, lest they should precipate the republican tendency of their own people, by telling them that that system of government requires an equality of civil rights and franchise. Such discussion would be fatal to their empire and their power.

The government of Great Britain is composed of a few thousand titled and privileged persons, located in a small island, who are born to rule and govern. From their isolated position it is not possible for them to come in contact with the numerous, heterogeneous, and inferior tribes and races under their rule. They are thus protected from possible admixture of inferior blood, not only by their isolated position, but by carefully cultivating aristocratic pride of birth, of rank, and caste. From this small centre they extend their rule over a vast empire, the power not going up from the people, as with us, but going down to the people,and extending out to them through the iron arm of imperial authority. The British government, as a strong centralized power, can with ease throw the iron bands around differing tribes, heterogeneous masses, and distant provinces, and, by external pressure, give unity to the whole. Such a government can distribute just so much civil liberty and elective franchise to the home population, distant tribes, heterogeneous populations, and remote provinces, as may be regarded safe for the ruling classes. Hence, some of the people of Great Britain are electors, others not; some of the provinces have large liberties, other have not; equal rights for all the people being no part of the British system.

How can such a people comprehend the necessity or use of removing the man of color? And those of them who do, dare not discuss it. The usual course with them, therefore, is to sneer or misrepresent our views and plans of colonization, and hold in light esteem the fears of those large portions of the American people, know[n] as colonizationistss, who have neither the citadel of an island home, nor the laws of rank and class to protect them against this repulsive admixture of blood. Here we stand on the open plain of republican institutions and plain simplicity of manners; all the guards peculiar to European society have been broken down,

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Obliged by our fundamental laws to give equal rights to all our citizens. What is to protect us as a people from degenerating as a race, but the resolve to receive no blood from the other races but that which can be honorably and safely engrafted on the stock of the nation. As we understand it, this is the only right you reserve, when you lay the liberties and privileges of a great republic at the feet of the nations of the earth. You reserve the right to choose your future citizens; but to such as you cannot receive, you say, not as empires do, come and serve us and we will bless you with our iron rule; but you say, go and establish a government like this, as for our people, the men of Europe, we constitute one family, ordered so of God, and by him kept compact and together through the ages gone; we will restrain cupidity, and refrain from extending dominion into your tropical home, go and establish such a political family for yourselves; you shall have our aid, our fraternal sympathy and support; we will tax ourselves to give you nationality and freedom. Such have been the utterances of our great men of the present. Then why should England murmur at our giving nationality to the negro? It is the best our Republic can do for them and ourselves. However, we will express the conviction that many of the gentlemen of the present English administration are truly our friends, but hey are embarrassed in their position by the republican tendency of their people, as this nation has been by the imperial tendency of ours; yet how can tat nation, or any other, object to our work of colonization? Does not this work necessarily imply the gradual emancipation of the slave and the entire extirpation of the institution of slavery? For how can slaves be colonized unless first freed?

Let us then, earnestly and respectfully recommend as a remedy for our present troubles and future danger, the perfecting the proposed plans of the administration in regard to those two conflicting races, and the careful and gradual removal of the colored race to some desirable and convenient home. This suggests that the tropical lands of our own hemisphere should be devoted to their use, and that all available means should be seized to pour a flood of Anglo-African civilization on the tropical lands of the old hemisphere most accessible to us (Western Africa.) In doing this we take from imperialism its temptation to tamper with our republicanism; for by preserving the heterogeneous

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character of our population, we perpetuate our republican equality in social and civil life.

It further suggests that our legislation should cover the wants and well-being of both races, and that statesmen should consider, first, the good of the white race, then, the good and well-being of the black; making at least as liberal appropriations for the colonization of the Indian, upon whom millions on millions have been expended with but imperfect success in the cause of civilization, whilst the slender means of the friends of the African civilization have produced lasting results. Some affect to fear that the man of color will not remove to a separate locality. It is not to be expected that a race, which has hardly attained a mental majority, will rise in a day to the stature of the men who found empires, build cities, and lay the ground work of civil institutions like ours; nor should they be expected to do this unaided and alone. They should receive the kind attention, direction, and aid of those who understand such things; nor will the world condemn a gentle pressure in the forward course to overcome the natural inertia of masses long used to the driver's will and rod. Let us do justice in the provision we make for their future comfort, and surety they will do justice to our distracted Republic. If they should fail to do this, there would then be more propriety in weighing the requirement of some to remove without consultation, but not till then. The more intelligent men of color can now see the necessity that rests upon us, and they will aid us in this work. We know that there is a growing sentiment in the country which considered the removal of the freed man, without consulting him, "a moral and military necessity" -- as a measure necessary to the purity of public morals and the peace of the country; and this unhappy war of white man with white man, about the condition of the black, will multiply this sentiment. But we cannot go further now than suggesting, that the mandatory relation held by the rebel master should escheat to the Federal government in a modified sense, so as to enable his proper government and gradual removal to a proper home where he can be independent.

"God ordained in the beginning a separate and distinct subsistence for the great races of men, 'when he separated the sons of Adam,' (when) 'he set the bounds of the people,' 'when he determined the times before appointed,

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And the bounds of their habitation." An observance of this Divine economy is essential to the peace and happiness of the human family, whilst every departure from it, caused by cupidity or ambition, results in oppression to the man, and corruption to the few.

We earnestly pray that a perpetual barrier may be reared between us and that land of the mixed races of this continent - Mexico. That, so far as this nation is concerned, we shall forever guarantee the integrity of her country, and so adjust our policy, that she might gradually receive our colored people, which when added to her already large body of five and a half or six millions of people of mixed race, would give her a population of near 12,000,000 persons of mixed caste, and, in the course of half a century, she will have a strong and compact community of near twenty million persons of color. It is the conviction of millions that this should be the line of policy towards Mexico and Central America. As Abraham and Lot agreed to separate their conflicting retainer and dependents, the one going to the right and the other to the left, so let those two governments agree to divide this continent between the Anglo-American and mixed races, the latter taking that which nature, in her wisdom, has prepared for them, and which for beauty, fertility, and grandeur of scenery, cannot be equaled on the globe - a country once the seat of empire and home of ancient civilization, he monuments of which abound in Central America.

If we would retain our republicanism, it must become a fixed principle with us not to add territory to our country on the south, unless that territory is uninhabited; for every square mile added which is encumbered with a mixed race of local and fixed habits, (unused to migration like the Mexican and Central American Indian, and Negro races,) adds danger, trouble, and sure decay to republicanism. Statesmen may boast that "it is our manifest destiny to annex all the adjoining country and cover it with our institutions." With all due respect to them, we say they speak without reflection. Our republican institutions are not adapted to mixed races and classified people. Our institutions require a homogeneous population to rest on as a basis; without this basis, the continuance of republicanism, for any great length of time, is impossible.

"Power is ever stealing from the many to the few," and ambitious and designing men are ever on the alert to take

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advantage of actual or accidental differences in race, nationality, or religion, to divide the masses of a republic into permanent factions or bands; the effect of which, is the introduction, first of an oligarchy, to be soon followed by a monarchy. The true preservative against this tendency is a removal of slaves and serfs; a thorough amalgamation of such populations as we agree to receive - educated electors and citizens, reverence for God and his word, which will give moral strength to the nation; and this will ever prove a guard against imperialism.

Such are the difficult alternatives for American and African; but they are not so hard on the African as the sufferings now resting on millions of Americans, because they were not considered long ago. Let us not talk of the hardships of separation and migration, in the light of burning cities, ruined fortunes, States desolated, murdered kindred, homeless families, widowed mothers, helpless orphans, and the nameless woes of this struggle of imperialism to regain its hold on a free people. If we wish to retain our republicanism, or rather perfect what Washington and Jefferson began, we should adopt as nearly as we can the above rules of life and government. It is then we can present to the world a compact and united people - educated and powerful - honoring God and his word - free from cupidity, that cause of aggression and wrong - making our own rulers, and respecting them when made. In this position, and with these qualifications, in the order of Providence, we must become "the light of the world."

We will close this plea for the nationality of the negro and the peace of this nation, by making a few inquiries.

Will not New England, which is now placing untold treasure and the best blood of hers sons on the altar of the country, go one step further and sacrifice therewith pride of opinion in reference to the gradual removal of this people, hereby taking away the conflict of opinion as a first step to unity of national counsel, to be followed we trust by national peace?

Will not the loyal men of the South and West cut up by the roots every false principle in southern policy that bears the imprint of that apostle of imperial rule, John C. Calhoun, and remove from place and power such as have been untrue to the teachings of Washington and Jefferson on the negro question? or will they stand up in the light of this age, the inflexible advocates of an inexorable servitude

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for the black man, until the surcharged thunder-clouds of other and worse revolutions burst on their country?

Will not the men of England enable us to respect, if not love, the land which has given us our language, most of our institutions, and national life, by permitting us to mature plans and opinions in harmony with our civil and social structure, undisturbed by the doctrines of imperial society and life?

And will not the good men of this country sink party in patriotism in the support of the wise measures already proposed on this subject, asking the intelligent free man of color to reflect and act in harmony with such measures as tend to peace?

May the Power which rules the destiny of nations grant that the above may receive an affirmative answer, and that your hands may be strengthened in this hours of peril!

Respectfully submitted

JAMES MITCHELL
Washington, May 18, 1862

[M. Espinola] Abraham Lincoln, December 1st, 1862, Message to Congress, James Ford Rhodes, "History of the Civil War, 1861–1865", 1917, page 198.

LINCOLN VIEWED BY HIS CONTEMPORARIES

In his History of the United States, Vol. IV., page 520, Rhodes makes the sweeping assertion that --

"Lincoln's contemporaries failed to perceive his greatness."

Other Republican writers make the same statement. Yet none attempted to explain why those who best knew Mr. Lincoln failed to esteem or respect him. Chase, while in his Cabinet, had every opportuity to know Lincoln well. Tarbell says:

"Mr. Chase was never able to realize Mr. Lincoln's greatness."

McClure says:

"Chase was the most irritating fly in the Lincoln ointment."

In their voluminous life of Lincoln, Nicolay and Hay have this:

"Even to complete strangers Chase could not write without speaking slightingly of President Lincoln. He kept up this habit till the end of Lincoln's life. Chase's attitude toward the President varied between the limits of active brutality and benevolent contempt."

Of a bill to create offices in 1864, Chase wrote in his diary:

"If this bill becomes a law, Lincoln will most certainly put men in office from political considerations."

On this, page 448, Rhodes comments thus:

"A President who selected unfit generals for the reason that they represented phases of public opinion, would hardly hesitate to name postmasters and collectors who could be relied upon as a personal following."

Rhodes further says

"In conversation, in private correspondence, in the confidence of his diary, Chase dealt censure unrestrained on Lincoln's conduct of the war."

Morse says:

"Many distinguished men of his own party distrusted Mr. Lincoln's character."

On an official trip to Washington, February 23, 1863, Richard H. Dana wrote Thomas Lathrop as follows:

"I see no hope but in the army; the lack of respect for the President in all parties is unconcealed. The most striking thing is the absence of personal loyalty to the President. It does not exist. He has no admirers. If a convention were held tomorrow he would not get the vote of a single State. He does not act or talk or feel like the ruler of an empire. He seems to be fonder of details than of principles, fonder of personal questions than of weightier matters of empire. He likes rather to talk and tell stories with all sorts of people who come to him for all sorts of purposes, than to give his mind to the many duties of his great post. This is the feeling of his Cabinet. He has a kind of shrewd common sense, slip-shod, low-leveled honesty that made him a good Western lawyer, but he is an unutterable calamity to us where he is. Only the army can save us."

According to Lamon:

"The Rev. Mr. Collier, sharing the prevailing sentiment in regard to the incapacity and inefficiency of Lincoln's government, chanced to pass through the White House grounds. ... "

Charles Francis Adams wrote:

"When Lincoln first entered upon his functions as President, he filled with dismay all those brought in contact with him."

"When Lincoln entered upon his duties as President he displayed moral, intellectual and executive incompetency."

On August 1, 1862, Wendell Phillips said to his audience:

"As long as you keep the present turtle (Lincoln) at the head of affairs you make a pit with one hand and fill it with the other. I know Mr. Lincoln. I have been to Washington and taken his measure. He is a first-rate second-rate man; that is all of him. He is a mere convenience and is waiting, like any other broomstick, to be used."

In a speech made at Music Hall, New Haven, 1863, Phillips said:

"Lincoln was badgered into emancipation. After he issued it he said it was the greatest folly of his life. It was like the Pope's bull against the comet."

In Tremont Temple, Boston, Phillips said:

"With a man for President we should have put down the rebellion in ninety days."

At a Republican meeting in Boston, Phillips said:

"President Lincoln, with senile, lick-spittle haste, runs before his is bidden, to revoke the Hunter proclamation. The President and the Cabinet are treasonable. The President and the Secretary of War should be impeached."

In 1864, at Cooper Institute, Phillips said:

"I judge Mr. Lincoln by his acts, his violation of the law, his overthrow of liberty in the Northern States. I judge Mr. Lincoln by his words and deeds, and so judging, I am unwilling to trust Abraham Lincoln with the future of this country. Mr. Lincoln is a politician; politicians are like the bones of a horse's fore shoulder; not a straight one in it. I am a citizen watchful of constitutional liberty. Are you willing to sacrifice the constitutional rights of seventy years? A man in the field (the army) said: 'The re-election of Lincoln will be a national disaster.' Another said: 'The re-election of Lincoln will be naitonal destruction.' I want free speech. Let abraham Lincoln know that we are stronger than Abraham Lincoln; the he is the servant to obey us."

August 5, 1864, Henry Winter Davis and Senator Wade of Ohio issued this:

"A more studied outrage on the legislative authority of the people than was ever before perpetrated."

When Lincoln was asked if he had seen a speech of Phillips and the Winter Davis-Wade manifesto against him, he replied:

"I have seen enough to satisfy me that I am a failure, not only in the opinion of the people in the rebellion, but of many distinguished politicans of my own party." -- Lamon's Recollections, page 187.

In McClellan's Life, a number of letters to his wife are published, in which McClellan speaks of Stanton's visits.

McClellans writes:

"The most disagreeable thing about Stanton is the extreme virulence of his abuse of President Lincoln, his whole administration, as well of all the Republican party. I am often shocked."

McClellan writes:

"Stanton never speaks of the President in any way other than as "that original gorilla." he often says: "Du Chaillie was a fool to wander all the way to Africa in search of what he could have found in Springfield, Illinois."

McClellan writes:

Nothing can be more bitter than Stanton's words and manner when speaking of the President and his administration. He gives them no credit or honesty of purpose or patriotism, and very seldom for ability. He often advised the propriety of my seizing the government and taking power in my own hands."

McClellan writes:

"Stanton often speaks of the painful imbecility of the President."

In McClure's Life of Lincoln, page 150, is this:

"Before Stanton was appointed Secretary of War he was an open and malignant opponent of the Lincoln administration. He often spoke to public men, military and civil, with withering sneers of Lincoln. I have hard him speak thus of Lincoln, and several times to him in the same way."

Hapgood's Lincoln, page 164 tells of Stanton saying:

"I met Lincoln at the bar and found him a low, cunning clown."

=====

Facts and Falsehoods Concerning the War on the South 1861-65, George Edmonds, 1904, pp. 12-19.

=====

A.K. McClure says (Lincoln and Men of the War Time, p. 51) of Lincoln:

"If he could only have commanded the hearty co-operation of the leaders of his own party, his task would have been greatly lessened, but it is due to the truth of history to say that few, very few, of the Republicans of national fame had faith in Lincoln's ability for the trust assigned to him. I could name a dozen men, now [1892] idols of the nation, whose open distrust of Lincoln not only seriously embarrassed, but grievously pained and humiliated him."

Ida Tarbell in McClures Magazine, July 1899, calls Senator Sumner, Ben Wade, Henry Winter Davis, and Secretary Chase "Malicious foes of Lincoln," and makes the remarkable and comprehensive concession that "about all the most prominent leaders . . . were actively opposed to Lincoln," and mentions Greeley as their chief."

"Fremont, who eight years before had received every Republican vote for President, charged Lincoln (Holland's Abraham Lincoln, p. 259, p. 469, and p 471) with "incapacity and selfishness," with "disregard of personal rights," with "violation of personal liberty and liberty of the press," with "feebleness and want of principle"; and says, "The ordinary rights under the Constitution and laws of the country have been violated," and he further accuses Lincoln of "managing the war for personal ends."

Dr. Holland shows (Abraham Lincoln, p. 469, et seq.) that Fremont, Wendell Phillips, Fred Douglass, and Greeley were leaders in a very nearly successful effort to defeat Lincoln's second nomination, and quotes as follows, action of the convention for that purpose held in Cleveland, May 21, 1864, that "the public liberty was in danger"; that its object was to arouse the people, "and bring them to realize that, while we are saturating Southern soil with the best blood of the country in the name of liberty, we have really parted with it at home."

Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, in a speech at Grand Rapids, September 8, 1900, said that in 1864, "on every hand Lincoln was denounced as a tyrant, a shedder of blood, a foe to liberty, a would-be dictator, a founder of an empire...."

Ida Tarbell, McClure's Magazine, March 1899, recorded the opinion of Secretary of State Seward:

"[Seward] believed, as many Republicans did, that Lincoln was unfit for the presidency, and that some one of his associates would be obliged to assume leadership...."

A.K. McClure writes:

"After Stanton's retirement from the Buchanan cabinet, when Lincoln was inaugurated, he maintained the closest confidential relations with Buchanan, and wrote him many letters expressing the utmost contempt for Lincoln ... These letters, ... given to the public in Curtis's Life of Buchanan, speak freely of the painful imbecility of Lincoln, the venality and corruption which ran riot in the government," and McClure goes on: "It is an open secret that Stanton advised the revolutionary overthrow of the Lincoln government, to be replaced by General McClellan as Military Dictator."

Schouler says of Stanton (History of the United States, Vol VI, p. 159)

"He denounced Lincoln in confidential speeches and letters as a coward and a fool."

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The Real Lincoln, Charles L.C. Minor, 1904, pp. 35-42

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The Lincoln monument was unveiled on April 14, 1876. Frederick Douglass said:

Truth is proper and beautiful at all times and in all places, and it is never more proper and beautiful in any case than when speaking of a great public man whose example is likely to be commended for honor and imitation long after his departure to the solemn shades, the silent continent of eternity. It must be admitted, truth compels me to admit, even here in the presence of the monument we have erected to his memory, Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and his prejudices, he was a white man. He was preeminently the white man's President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men (FD 4:312, italics added)

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Forced Into Glory, Lerone Bennett, Jr., pp. 624-5

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Col. Donn Piatt travelled with Lincoln when he was making his campaign speeches and knew him intimately.

Donn Piatt said:

"When a leader dies all good men go to lying about him. From the moment that covers his remains to the last echo of the rural press, in speeces, in sermons, eulogies, reminiscences, we hear nothing but pious lies."

Donn Piatt continues:

"Abraham Lincoln has almost disappears from human knowledge. I hear of him, I read of him in eulogies and biographies but I fail to recognize the man I knew in life."

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The Truths of History, Margaret Rutherford, 1920, pp. 79

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"It is usual today, [says George Fort Milton in his Age of Hate], to depict the death of Lincoln as having occasioned an universal outburst of grief throughout the North and particularly amoung the leaders of the Republican party, by whom "the Great Emancipator" has since been made a party god. When a searcher for the truth examines the private records of the time, he can scrace repress a feeling of surprise, for the fact is that the Radical leadership of the Republican party, while not pleased with the sacrifice of Lincoln, the individual, almost rejoiced that Lincoln, the merciful executive, had been removed from the helm of state."

Julian, one of these Radical leaders, boldly stated that the accession of Andrew Johnson to the presidency would prove a blessing to the country. In this sentiment he was not alone. On April 15, only a few hours after Lincoln's death, a caucus of Republican leaders was held, at which the tragedy was described as a gift from Heaven, and it was decided to get rid of Lincolnism. Ben Butler was chosen to be Secretary of State. Unfortunately for that plan, Seward's injuries were not fatal, and his position did not become vacant. Blunt Senator Wade told the new President, "Johnson, we have faith in you. By the gods, there will be no trouble now in running the government!" Johnson had been ranting for weeks past that secession was treason, that treason must be made odious, and that all Confederates should be hanged.

From the pulpit, the Radical sentiments poured forth with astounding frankness. "I accept God's action as an indication that Lincoln's work as an instrument of Providence ended here," said the Reverend Martin R. Vincent, in the First Presbyterian church of Troy, New York, "and that the work of retribution belonged to other and doubtless fitter instruments. I will not positively assert that his policy toward traitors was so much too lenient that God replaced him by a man, who, we have good reasons to think, will not err in this direction. Yet I say this may be and it looks like it."

The Reverend Warren E. Cudsworth, in Boston, also expressed his satisfaction, "His [Lincoln's] death under God will do as much for the cause he had at heart as did his life. We know that already several of the leading supporters of his administration had taken issue with him on Reconstruction in the rebel states."

The Reverend Mr. Crane was convinced that the assassination was the work of Providence. "Abraham Lincoln's work is done," he stated solemnly. "From the fourteenth of this April his work was done. From that time God had no further use for him ..."

* * *

It is remarkable how closely the wishes of the Radicals and the ways of Providence chanced to meet on "the fourteenth of this April." ... An attempt had also been made on the life of Seward, the only other prominent Republican who was lenient and conciliatory.

* * *

Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865.: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 5.
Address on Colonization to a Deputation of Negroes [1]

August 14, 1862

This afternoon the President of the United States gave audience to a Committee of colored men at the White House. They were introduced

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by the Rev. J. Mitchell, Commissioner of Emigration. E. M. Thomas, the Chairman, remarked that they were there by invitation to hear what the Executive had to say to them. Having all been seated, the President, after a few preliminary observations, informed them that a sum of money had been appropriated by Congress, and placed at his disposition for the purpose of aiding the colonization in some country of the people, or a portion of them, of African descent, thereby making it his duty, as it had for a long time been his inclination, to favor that cause; and why, he asked, should the people of your race be colonized, and where? Why should they leave this country? This is, perhaps, the first question for proper consideration. You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word we suffer on each side. If this is admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated. You here are freemen I suppose.

A VOICE: Yes, sir.

The President---Perhaps you have long been free, or all your lives. Your race are suffering, in my judgment, the greatest wrong

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inflicted on any people. But even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race. You are cut off from many of the advantages which the other race enjoy. The aspiration of men is to enjoy equality with the best when free, but on this broad continent, not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of ours. Go where you are treated the best, and the ban is still upon you.

I do not propose to discuss this, but to present it as a fact with which we have to deal. I cannot alter it if I would. It is a fact, about which we all think and feel alike, I and you. We look to our condition, owing to the existence of the two races on this continent. I need not recount to you the effects upon white men, growing out of the institution of Slavery. I believe in its general evil effects on the white race. See our present condition---the country engaged in war!---our white men cutting one another's throats, none knowing how far it will extend; and then consider what we know to be the truth. But for your race among us there could not be war, although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or the other. Nevertheless, I repeat, without the institution of Slavery and the colored race as a basis, the war could not have an existence.

It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated. I know that there are free men among you, who even if they could better their condition are not as much inclined to go out of the country as those, who being slaves could obtain their freedom on this condition. I suppose one of the principal difficulties in the way of colonization is that the free colored man cannot see that his comfort would be advanced by it. You may believe you can live in Washington or elsewhere in the United States the remainder of your life [as easily], perhaps more so than you can in any foreign country, and hence you may come to the conclusion that you have nothing to do with the idea of going to a foreign country. This is (I speak in no unkind sense) an extremely selfish view of the case.

But you ought to do something to help those who are not so fortunate as yourselves. There is an unwillingness on the part of our people, harsh as it may be, for you free colored people to remain with us. Now, if you could give a start to white people, you would open a wide door for many to be made free. If we deal with those who are not free at the beginning, and whose intellects are clouded by Slavery, we have very poor materials to start with. If intelligent colored men, such as are before me, would move in this matter, much might be accomplished. It is exceedingly important that

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we have men at the beginning capable of thinking as white men, and not those who have been systematically oppressed.

There is much to encourage you. For the sake of your race you should sacrifice something of your present comfort for the purpose of being as grand in that respect as the white people. It is a cheering thought throughout life that something can be done to ameliorate the condition of those who have been subject to the hard usage of the world. It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels he is worthy of himself, and claims kindred to the great God who made him. In the American Revolutionary war sacrifices were made by men engaged in it; but they were cheered by the future. Gen. Washington himself endured greater physical hardships than if he had remained a British subject. Yet he was a happy man, because he was engaged in benefiting his race---something for the children of his neighbors, having none of his own.

The colony of Liberia has been in existence a long time. In a certain sense it is a success. The old President of Liberia, Roberts, has just been with me---the first time I ever saw him. He says they have within the bounds of that colony between 300,000 and 400,000 people, or more than in some of our old States, such as Rhode Island or Delaware, or in some of our newer States, and less than in some of our larger ones. They are not all American colonists, or their descendants. Something less than 12,000 have been sent thither from this country. Many of the original settlers have died, yet, like people elsewhere, their offspring outnumber those deceased.

The question is if the colored people are persuaded to go anywhere, why not there? One reason for an unwillingness to do so is that some of you would rather remain within reach of the country of your nativity. I do not know how much attachment you may have toward our race. It does not strike me that you have the greatest reason to love them. But still you are attached to them at all events.

The place I am thinking about having for a colony is in Central America. It is nearer to us than Liberia---not much more than one-fourth as far as Liberia, and within seven days' run by steamers. Unlike Liberia it is on a great line of travel---it is a highway. The country is a very excellent one for any people, and with great natural resources and advantages, and especially because of the similarity of climate with your native land---thus being suited to your physical condition.

The particular place I have in view is to be a great highway from the Atlantic or Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean, and this

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particular place has all the advantages for a colony. On both sides there are harbors among the finest in the world. Again, there is evidence of very rich coal mines. A certain amount of coal is valuable in any country, and there may be more than enough for the wants of the country. Why I attach so much importance to coal is, it will afford an opportunity to the inhabitants for immediate employment till they get ready to settle permanently in their homes.

If you take colonists where there is no good landing, there is a bad show; and so where there is nothing to cultivate, and of which to make a farm. But if something is started so that you can get your daily bread as soon as you reach there, it is a great advantage. Coal land is the best thing I know of with which to commence an enterprise.

To return, you have been talked to upon this subject, and told that a speculation is intended by gentlemen, who have an interest in the country, including the coal mines. We have been mistaken all our lives if we do not know whites as well as blacks look to their self-interest. Unless among those deficient of intellect everybody you trade with makes something. You meet with these things here as elsewhere.

If such persons have what will be an advantage to them, the question is whether it cannot be made of advantage to you. You are intelligent, and know that success does not as much depend on external help as on self-reliance. Much, therefore, depends upon yourselves. As to the coal mines, I think I see the means available for your self-reliance.

I shall, if I get a sufficient number of you engaged, have provisions made that you shall not be wronged. If you will engage in the enterprise I will spend some of the money intrusted to me. I am not sure you will succeed. The Government may lose the money, but we cannot succeed unless we try; but we think, with care, we can succeed.

The political affairs in Central America are not in quite as satisfactory condition as I wish. There are contending factions in that quarter; but it is true all the factions are agreed alike on the subject of colonization, and want it, and are more generous than we are here. To your colored race they have no objection. Besides, I would endeavor to have you made equals, and have the best assurance that you should be the equals of the best.

The practical thing I want to ascertain is whether I can get a number of able-bodied men, with their wives and children, who are willing to go, when I present evidence of encouragement and

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protection. Could I get a hundred tolerably intelligent men, with their wives and children, to "cut their own fodder," so to speak? Can I have fifty? If I could find twenty-five able-bodied men, with a mixture of women and children, good things in the family relation, I think I could make a successful commencement.

I want you to let me know whether this can be done or not. This is the practical part of my wish to see you. These are subjects of very great importance, worthy of a month's study, [instead] of a speech delivered in an hour. I ask you then to consider seriously not pertaining to yourselves merely, nor for your race, and ours, for the present time, but as one of the things, if successfully managed, for the good of mankind---not confined to the present generation, but as

"From age to age descends the lay,
To millions yet to be,
Till far its echoes roll away,
Into eternity."

The above is merely given as the substance of the President's remarks.

The Chairman of the delegation briefly replied that "they would hold a consultation and in a short time give an answer." The President said: "Take your full time---no hurry at all."

The delegation then withdrew.

Annotation

[1] New York Tribune, August 15, 1862. An act "releasing certain persons held to labor in the District of Columbia" and providing $100,000 for colonization, became law on April 16, 1862, and an act approved on July 16, freed slaves in the hands of the army and granted $500,000 for colonization. Since October, 1861, the Chiriqui Project for colonization had been under cabinet consideration (see Lincoln to Smith October 23 and 24, 1861, supra). The appointment of Reverend James Mitchell of Indiana as agent of emigration is not listed in the Official Register, but contemporary records indicate that he operated in the Department of Interior as early as May 28, 1862, when he sent Lincoln his long letter on colonization printed by the Government Printing Office. His activity in July and August brought the matter of colonization to a head with the arrangement for an interview between Lincoln and the committee of Negroes headed by Edward M. Thomas on August 14. Thomas was president of the Anglo-African Institute for the Encouragement of Industry and Art. The committee's reception of Lincoln's views is indicated by a letter from Thomas written on August 16:

"We would respectfully suggest that it is necessary that we should confer with leading colored men in Phila New York and Boston upon the movement of emigration to the point recommended in your address.

"We were entirely hostile to the movement until all the advantages were so ably brought to our view by you and we believe that our friends and colaborers for our race in those cities will when the subject is explained by us to them join heartily in sustaining such a movement. . . ." (DLC-RTL).

Subsequent developments, however, indicated that Negroes in the District of Columbia received the colonization proposal with hostility. A Negro meeting held at Union Bethel Church was reported in the Baltimore Sun on August 23 as protesting against the plan: "Such dissatisfaction had been manifested in regard to the course of the committee who lately waited on the president . . . that they did not attend. It was hinted that they had exceeded their instructions."

Plans were fully matured in August, however, to send Senator Samuel C. Pomeroy with "500 able-bodied negroes as the first colony" to be settled on a site on the Isthmus of Chiriqui to be selected by Pomeroy (New York Tribune, September 15, 1862). A letter of authority from Lincoln to Pomeroy was prepared for Lincoln's signature, probably by the State Department, under date of September 10, 1862, but remains unsigned in duplicate copies in the Lincoln Papers. The project was abandoned when first Honduras and later Nicaragua and Costa Rica protested the scheme and hinted that force might be used to prevent the settlement.

http://www.jewish-history.com/Illoway/sermon.html

FAST DAY SERMON
at Baltimore, Jan. 4, 1861

This sermon, given at "National Fast Day" services at the Lloyd Street synagogue in Baltimore, proved so popular among the Jewish secessionists that Rabbi Illowy was invited to become the spiritual leader of Congregation Shaarei Hassed in New Orleans.

* * *

Now, my brethren, let me direct your attention to another topic, not less important than the last.

It is an incontestable truth that our republic stands among the governments of the earth like an ancient oak in the forest, which, after having overcome many a blast, overtops the other trees and commands respect and veneration; and as we may hope G-d will be with us, answer our prayers, heal the breach between our sister states, and the dissension will soon be peaceably settled, our Republic will again, as heretofore, be admired by Emperors and Kings, and the nations will again look at it with envy as the happiest system that was ever devised for uniting dignity in the magistrate and liberty in the nation, with protection and security to all. Yes, we may boast there has never yet existed a happier and mightier government than ours. There was already political liberty in the days of old. Sparta, Athens, Rome, Carthage, and Judea, were once republics; but there liberty was only an imaginary coin, a name usurped by tyranny, and they could not keep themselves safe against the attacks from without and discontent from within. Our sister Republic in Europe depends only upon the merciful protection of the despotical great powers; but our glorious Republic has achieved, up to the present critical moment, in not more than three quarters of a century, a government over thirty-three flourishing, sovereign, and independent States, without the support or protection of any foreign power. We have a commerce that leaves no sea unexplored, navies which take no law from any superior force, and a peace with all nations founded on equal rights and mutual respect.

All this is true, incontestably true, and we feel that we are exalted to the very gates of heaven in respect to our advantages and national excellencies; but let us take heed that we incur not the reproach with which our divine teacher Moses once rebuked our people, -- "Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked," -- let us take heed that we grows not dizzy with the neight of prosperity to which we have attained, that we reel not and stagger not on the summits of freedom, that the very loftiness of our happy state be not the means of giving impulse to our downfall, by which we might lose forever our honor and our privileges.

The vastness of our government, which is extended over an immense, large territory, and over numerous inhabitants, coming from many different regions of the world, forms a fruitful field of danger to the quiet and permanence of our institutions. It has ever proved unachievable in a commonwealth to make laws which could meet with the general approval of all its citizens, especially in a Republic like ours, composed of many different nationalities, coming from different countries, differing from each other more or less in customs, manners, habits, languages, creeds, and political views. In addition to all this, there must be brought into consideration the large extension of our territory; the law that provides for the benefit of the North, may operate with blighting effect upon the interests of the South, whilst that which promotes the immediate welfare of the South, may be injurious to that of the North. The contrariety of interests, the principal source from which all dissatisfaction flows, gives rise to party spirit, to a perpetual contest between the different states and the government, and between the different popular leaders who aspire to the chief influence, and the violence of a turbulent multitude.

The ends for which men unite in society and submit to government, are to enjoy security for their property and freedom for their persons from all injustice or violence. the more completely these ends are attained, with the least diminution of personal liberty, the nearer such government approaches to perfection. -- But who, for example, can blame our brethren of the South for their being inclined to secede from a society, under whose government those ends cannot be attained, and whose union is kept together, not by the good sense and good feelings of the great masses of the people, but by an ill-regulated balance of power and heavy iron ties of violence and arbitrary force? Who can blame our brethren of the South for seceding from a society whose government can not, or will not, protect the property rights and privileges of a great portion of the Union against the encroachments of a majority misguided by some influential, ambitious aspirants and selfish politicians who, under the color of religion and the disguise of philanthropy, have thrown the country into a general state of confusion, and millions into want and poverty? If these magnanimous philanthropists do not pretend to be more philanthropic than Moses was, let me ask them, "Why did not Moses, who, as it is to be seen from his code, was not in favor of slavery, command the judges in Israel to interfere with the institutions of those nations who lived under their jurisdiction, and make their slaves free, or to take forcibly away a slave from a master as soon as he treads the free soil of their country? Why did he not, when he made a law that no Israelite can become a slave, also prohibit the buying and selling of slaves from and to other nations? Where was ever a greater philanthropist than Abraham, and why did he not set free the slaves which the king of Egypt made him a present of?"

Why did Ezra not command the Babylonian exiles who, when returning to their old country, had in their suit seven thousand three hundred and thirty-seven slaves, to set their slaves free and send them away, as well as he commanded them to send away the strange wives which they had brought along? It is an historical fact, that even the Therepentae and Essenes, two Jewish sects, who with a kind of religious frenzy, placed their whole felicity in the contemplation of the divine nature, detaching themselves from all secular affairs, entrusted to their slaves the management of their property.

All these are irrefutable proofs that we have no right to exercise violence against the institutions of other states or countries, even if religious feelings and philanthropic sentiments bit us disapprove of them. It proves furthermore, that the authors of the many dangers, which threaten our country with ruin and devastation, are not what they pretend to be, the agents of Religion and Philanthropy.

Therefore, my friends, there is only one rampart which can save our country from degradation and ruin, and shield it against all the danger arising within and threatening from without. This is, the good will, the good sense and feelings of the great mass of the people. They must have no other guide than the book of G-d and the virtues which it teaches, and make their hearts inacessible to the pernicious influence of some individuals who exert all their efforts to mislead them, under the disguise of Religion and Philanthropy, from the TRUE PATH OF TRUE RELIGION.

The foundation of all the happiness of a country must be laid in the good conduct of the mass of the people, in their love of industry, sobriety, justice, virtue, and principally in their unfeigned religious feelings. Such virtues are the sinews and strength of a country: they are the supports of its prosperity at home and of its reputation abroad. Righteousness and justice will ever exalt a nation.

Thus saith the Lord, "Keep ye justice and do equity, for near is my help to come, and my righteousness to be revealed." Keep justice and truth in your gates, and the merciful Father will graciously answer our prayers and save us forever and ever--Amen.

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