FOREIGN POWERS THE ENEMIES OF REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT--THEIR PART IN THE
PROGRAMME OF THE REBELLION.
The event of the American revolution burst upon the world as the most
startling era in the history of nations. Monarchical Europe had long
envied the proud career and inevitable destiny of these States,
which had been shaken as the brightest jewels from the British Crown.
Monarchs, Emperors, Queens, lords, princes and diplomats, who wield the
sceptre of dominion, could not conceal the joy afforded them by a
scene, which executed, promised the speedy extinguishment of the leading
national power on the globe, and the final demolition of the only altar
of liberty upon which the fires of freedom had continued bright.
The event created the more joy, because it was attributable partly to
the efforts so strenuously put forth for many preceding years by the
combined enemies of American Independence, to poison the American
mind and breed disunion in the ranks of a free, industrious and honest
yeomanry, with a view to the ultimate dissolution of the bonds of the
Union.
These enemies, however, for some time anterior to the development of the
fruit of their labors, had begun to despair of the cause in which they
had engaged, and it is possible that the scheme of American wreck
and ruin upon their part had been permanently abandoned, hence their
immediate demonstrations of joy at the triumph of their cause of
sedition.
But seeds sown, however barren the soil, seldom fail of some growth,
and subsequent to the presidential election of 1860, the great American
rebellion became transparent to both friend and foe. To enumerate and
examine in detail the different phases of the programme of artificial
causes which precipitated defiance of the General Government, and gave
origin to the chronic disorder of the people of different sections upon
the subject of their government, would occupy more space than has been
allotted this brief narrative, which is more especially intended to
embrace a readable compilation of the later movements of the enemies of
the Government to crown the Confederate cause with success, through the
bloody implement of Conspiracy and Revolution in the Northern States.
Having alluded to the prominent part occupied by foreign hostile powers
in the general scheme of Conspiracy against the Federal Government, a
brief allusion to the part executed by the native born American will not
be out of place.
The cheek tingles with the blush of shame, when alas, it _must_ be said
that the pride of the American has been humbled by his too faithful
adherence to the grand original compact of treason, even after the
second most potent auxiliary to the plan had been tenderly touched
with the wickedness of the scheme, and had withdrawn in dismay at the
approach of the enactment of crime so revolting.
All things material and tangible have their bases and starting points,
so too, had the Southern Rebellion its foundation stone laid deep and
solid in the minds of the people by John C. Calhoun, the first great
Supreme Commander of the germ from whence sprung the various elements of
treason, which have entered into the composition of the powers seeking
the destruction of the Federal Government. As for the doctrine of State
Rights as expounded by Calhoun, it is carried beyond the Virginia and
Kentucky resolutions of '98, to that point which renders it destructive
of the end for which it is claimed to be enunciated.
It has been sought to carry the doctrine to that extremity beyond the
exercise of its own reserved powers, which must inevitably bring it in
collision with the legitimate operation of the powers delegated to the
General Government.
With this extreme, hence fallacious, doctrine of State Rights thus
firmly imbedded in the hearts and heads of a zealous people, rendering
them, upon conscientious principles, the ready tools of ambitious
leaders, filled with lust for power and place, it should not be a matter
of so much surprise, that, after years of uninterrupted and persistent
education and training of the generations in their order, that the year
of 1860 found the continent trembling beneath the crack of musketry, the
tread of horse, and the roar of cannon.
As among the more important means used by designing men in aid of
the scheme of rebellion, and the ultimate establishment of a separate
government in the South, the nucleus of which was to be the cotton
states, secret organizations, assuming different names and traditions
in different localities in the South were established, having for
their special mission in the meantime the privacy of the plot, and the
education of the people to that indispensable standard of treason which
would eventually lead them to avow their principles at the point of the
sword.
These organizations, in point of antiquity, are traced to a time not
long anterior to the nullification of South Carolina in 1832, which was
so promptly suppressed by General Jackson, then President of the United
States. Some of them, however, claim even greater antiquity, and point
with affected pride to the historical period of the American colonial
revolution against the taxation and tyranny of England, as the date of
their origin. Whatever may be the facts as to the precise date of the
existence, respectively, of these disreputable cables, laid to undermine
the greatness and glory of the National Union, cemented as it is by the
blood of the sires and sages of the Revolution, is unimportant to the
purpose of the author, while the great living fact that they have been
the most deadly weapon in the hands of the enemy is corroborated by the
eventful history of the union of these States.
Prior to the breaking out of the rebellion in 1861, these various
organizations, being the van-guards in the general conspiracy against
the integrity and perpetuity of the Federal Government, had not been
introduced, to any great extent, in the non-slaveholding states, and in
consequence thereof had little or no tangibility north of the compromise
of 1820, familiarly known as Mason and Dixon's line. South of this line,
however, they had long been standing institutions in every city,
town, hamlet, villa and populated district throughout all of the late
so-called Confederate States of America; vying the Palmetto in rankness
of growth, and rivaling the rattlesnake in deadness of poison, until
at length, gorged with their own baneful offspring, and pale with the
sickness of their own stomachs, the child of secession was born unto
them as a curse and reproach to the Southern people and the generations
to follow them forever.
On the 17th of April, 1861, the report of the gun fired upon Fort Sumter
was heard by every member of these secret conclaves in the South, and
was the signal for the opening of the outer gates of every temple of
treason in the land.
From that inauspicious moment forward to the present, no mask has hid
from the scorn of the Christian world treason's hideous visage, but that
blear-eyed monster, armed with every weapon of iniquity which devilish
invention could devise, has alternately, with rage and despair, rushed
to and fro across the continent, spilling the blood of innocence.
When, upon the occurrence of the Presidential election in 1860, it was
found that the kernel planted by Calhoun had been fostered to maturity
by secret organization, the blood and treasure of seven states was at
once staked upon the fearful result, and the disruption of the Republic
and the erection of a slave-driving despotism upon the ruins solemnly
declared. In the outset, it was thought by leading political minds at
the North, that but little sincerity could be attached to the assertion
of independence by the Southern people. But as time elapsed and the
contest grew more formidable and bloody, Northern men began by degrees
to comprehend the magnitude of a chronic conspiracy which had cost the
life-long labors of its ablest advocates to prepare. And though the
hosts enlisted in the execution of this conspiracy for a time won the
prestige of victors upon fields of blood, knowledge of their sincerity
of purpose and the extent of their carefully collected resources at
length came to every loyal man in the country, and vigorous measures,
corresponding to the necessity, were at once devised, the effects of
which are now seen in the capture of Richmond and the surrender of Lee.
Earlier than this date in the progress of the struggle, however, it
became manifest that the wheel of fortune would eventually turn against
the cause of the South in consequence of her comparative weakness to
contend against a power so amply provided with the material of war as
the government at Washington. Then it was that the project of enlarging
the area of the rebellion, first fell upon the Southern mind as
indispensable to their cause, now fast becoming desperate in the
extreme. Hurried raids into border northern states gave to the prowess
of southern arms but momentary _eclat_, and little or no enduring
strength was added to the stability of the Richmond government, beyond
the plunder obtained in the line of march. On the contrary, these raids,
instead of being evidence of the power of the South to maintain the
standard of independence, were looked upon by the military chieftains
of the North, without apprehension further than the demoralization,
consequent upon the particular neighborhoods and districts thus invaded.
In fact each recurring raid gave additional grounds for the confident
belief on the part of the North, that the downfall of the rebellion was
but a question of time, much sooner to be solved than many people of
both sections supposed. These symptoms of the distress of the cause
meantime did not escape the sagacity of the leaders of the rebellion,
and as an expedient remedy, the plan of secretly organizing traitors
in the northern states was determined upon as early as 1862, by the
political representatives and agents of the confederate states, the
attempt, character and success of which project will be the subject of
the next chapter.