Brooks Hissed—The Rebellion Applauded! (1863

Source: The Friend. Honolulu: February, 1863, page 10. 

The Country Parson says that much depends upon the way an idea is put. We think the Editor of the London Morning Star put most aptly the following comparison before the minds of his countrymen: 

"When Sumner was struck down in the Senate house by a Southern ruffian, all Europe hissed at the outrage, while the ladies of South Carolina presented its bully perpetrator with a gold-headed cane. The rebellion is just such a blow at the Union as Preston Brooks struck at Charles Sumner—and yet there are English hands and voices to applaud the deed as worthy heroes of partriotism and civilization."

If a person will think a moment, he will see that there is an inconsistency between hissing the deed of ruffian Brooks, and applauding the Southern Rebellion! Poor Brooks now lies in his grave, but the voice of Senator Sumner sounds forth, clear and sonorous, in the Senate Chamber, advocating truth and freedom. We hope the rebellion will, ere long, be attended to its grave, never to rise again, while the Union shall long survive, to offer a home for the oppressed of all nations, and proclaim freedom to the millions of slaves, for whose perpetual enslavement the southern army is now fighting with an energy and valor worthy of a better cause. 

Disguise the truth as you may, it is for ne-gro-chattel-slavery that the Southerners are now fighting. Read the following from a late number of the Richmond Examiner: 

"As the war originated and is carried on in great part for the defense of the slave-holder in his property, rights, and the perpetuation of the institution, he ought to be first and foremost in aiding, by every means in his power, the triumph and success of our arms. The slave-holder ought to remember that for every negro he thus furnishes he puts a soldier in the ranks."

Captain Brinsmade in the Rebel Army (1863)

Source: The Friend. Honolulu: February, 1863, page 10. 


We have occasionally spoken of Sandwich Islanders being in the Northern Army, but we learn from a late number of the New York Spectator, that Abbott Brinsmade, the only son of the late P. A. Brinsmade, Esq., U. S. Consul, is now a captain in the Rebel Army. 

It appears that his wife, a native of New Orleans, on visiting New York has been arrested as a spy, but as some suppose without the necessary proof. It appears that the Captain has lost a hand in some engagement.

Photograph of Mr. Lincoln (1862)

Note: No photo was featured with the story published in The Polynesian)

Source: The Polynesian. Honolulu: Saturday, September 27, 1862

To say that he is ugly, is nothing; to add that his figure is grotesque, is to convey no adequate impression. Fancy a man six feet high, and thin out of proportion; with long bony arms and legs, which somehow seem to salways be in the way; with great rugged furrowed hands, which grasp you like a vice when shaping yours; with a long scraggy neck, and a chest too narrow for the great arms at its side. And to this figure a head, cocoanut shaped and somewhat too small for such a stature, covered with rough, uncombed and uncombable hair, that stands out in every direction at once; face furrowed, wrinkled and indented as though it had been scarred by vitriol; a high narrow forehead, and, sunk deep beneath bushy eyebrows, two bright, somewhat dreamy eyes, that seem to gaze through you without looking at you; a few irregular blotches of black, briskly hair, in the place where beard and whiskers ought to grow; a close-set, thin-lipped, stern mouth, with two rows of large white teeth, and a nose and ears which have been taken by mistake from a head of twice the size. Clothe this figure, then, in a long, tight, badly-fitting suit of black, creased, soiled, and pucked up at every salient point of the figure (and every point of this figure is salient) put on parge, ill-fitting boots, gloves too long for the long bony fingers, sand a fluffy hat, covered to the top with dusty, puffy crape; and then as moral, and a strange look of dignity coupled with all this grotesqueness, and you will have the impression left upon me by Abraham Lincoln. 

-MacMillan's Magazine.*

*Macmillan's Magazine was founded in 1859 by David Masson, the professor of English Literature at Edinburgh University. Masson was the journal's first editor (1859-68) and was followed by George Grove (1868-83), John Morley (1883-85) and Mowbray Morris (1885-1907). Contributors to the magazine included Alfred Tennyson, Thomas Hughes, Anne Clough and F. D. Maurice.

Mr. Seward (1862)

Source: The Polynesian. Honolulu: Saturday, September 13, 1862

MR. SEWARD. -A man, I should think, under 5 feet 9 inches in height, and of some sixty years in age; small made, with small, delicate hands and feet, and a small, wiry body; scanty, snow-white; deep-set, clear grey eyes; a face perfectly clean-shavened, and a smooth colorless skin, of a sort of parchment texture. Such were the outward features that struck me at once. He was in his office when first I saw him, dressed in black, with his waistcoat half unbuttoned, one leg over the side of his arm-chair, and a cigar stuck between his lips. Barring the cigar and the attitude, I should have taken him for a shrewd, well-to-do-attorney, waiting to hear a new client's business. You are at your ease with him at once. There is a frankness and bonhomie about his manner, which renders it, to my mind, a very pleasant one. In our British phrase, Mr. Seward is good company. A good cigar, a good glass of wine, and a good story, even if it is tant soit peurisque, are pleasures which he obviously enjoys keenly. Still, a glance at that hard knit frame, and that clear, bright eye, shows you that no pleasure, however keenly appreciated, has been indulged into excess throughout his long, laborious career. And, more than that, no one who has had the pleasure of seeing him amongst his own family can doubt the kindliness of his disposition. It is equally impossible to talk much with him without perceiving that he is a man of remarkable ability. He has read much-especially of modern literature-traveled much, and seen much of the world of man as well as that of books. 
-Court Journal. 

The Monitor and Merrimac 'BY AN EYE-WITNESS.' (1862)

Source: Pacific Commercial Advertiser. Honolulu: June 5, 1862

Originally published in The Friend (Samuel C. Damon, Editor). Honolulu: June 2, 1862.

[From The Friend.]

The Monitor and Merrimac.

BY AN EYE-WITNESS.

We take great pleasure in laying before our readers the following graphic sketch of the great naval battle between the Monitor and Merrimac. It has never before been published, having been written by an eyewitness, and communicated in a letter to a kind friend, who has furnished it at our solicitation. It was not intended for publication. We are confident our readers will peruse this letter with much interest. It is an event of the civil war in America, which seems destined to revolutionize all the navies of the world—place all the nations of earth upon a common level. All must now begin, to build anew their navies. As it has been forcibly remarked, "The Monitor, in one day, battered down the navies of the globe." They lay at the mercy of her guns. This shows the conquering power of a new idea. It is, after all, true, that mind rules the world. An idea of Ericsson—the native of Sweden, and the adopted son of America—now "rules the sea," and is "Mistress of the Ocean":

Camp Butler—Newport News. 

I suppose you have heard of the naval engagement, off this place, between our men-of-war and the iron-clad steamer Merrimac, but as some of the accounts in the papers were not exactly as it happened, I will just give you an eye-witness-description of it. 

It commenced about 1 o'clock on Saturday, the 8th March. 1 had just sat down to write when the long roll beat, and the men all rushed to arms. I went down to my gun on the battery to see the cause of the alarm. I did not have to look long, for down the river, towards Norfolk, I saw three rebel gun-boats coming up; in advance of these was something that looked like a roof of a house, with a chimney in the center. We all knew in an instant what it was, and the cry "the Merrimac is coming" passed through the whole camp. A very formidable appearance she presented to us, and we knew we had got some fighting to do to get rid of her. 

As soon as she got within range of the guns of the frigate Congress, that frigate opened on her, as well as the battery here; but the Merrimac took no notice of the shot, although they were falling like hail, and kept steadily on till abreast of the Congress, when she opened her ports and poured a broadside into her, with terrible effect. The Congress then returned the broadside directly down on the Merrimac, but with still no visible effect, and the shot only rattled down like so many marbles. The Merrimac then kept on for the Cumberland, which lay a short distance from the Congress; it was now a perfect thunder of cannon, for the Congress, Cumberland, and our battery, were raining solid shot on the Merrimac —still she kept on for the Cumberland, running presently into her starboard bow, and at the same time firing a broadside into her, which made an awful slaughter. One ball from the Merrimac killed sixteen men at one gun. The Cumberland immediately returned a broadside of 120-lb. solid shot, the Merrimac being close to the muzzles of the guns; it only had the effect of dismounting the only gun they had in sight, and cutting away two of her flag-staffs. The Cumberland now began to settle slowly, but still kept firing. The commander of the Merrimac now asked the commander of the Cumberland if he would surrender. " No, never," said that gallant commander, but still kept on firing. As she began to go down faster, the commander was again asked if he was ready to surrender. " No," said be, "I will go down with my colors flying" —and so he did. 

Until the water was knee-deep on the gun-deck, the Cumberland kept up her firing, and finally sunk, carrying over a hundred brave and loyal men to a watery grave. It was a terrible sight to us to see this noble vessel disappearing from our sight; not a sound was heard on shore as she made her final plunge in the river she had so faithfully guarded—even the cannon ceased their thunder for a few minuted, and the "stillness of death was here." 

Just before the poor Cumberland went down, the Congress slipped her cables and ran ashore on the point about half a mile below here. Both of our vessels being now out of the way, three more gun-boats came down the river from Richmond. 

The Merrimac next commenced to shell our camp, but being so near, she did not do much harm, her shot passing over us. She then ran down to where the Congress was ashore, and was joined by the other six rebel gun-boats. The Congress fired a few shots in return, and then hoisting the white flag, surrendered. 

One of the gun-boats came up to take the crew prisoners, but were kept off by the boys on shore, who fired with their rifles—so the Rebels only succeeded in taking a very few. 

The Merrimac, and all the gun-boats, commenced shelling the camp, the shot and shell whistling over us and crashing among the trees of the forest, and occasionally smashing our tents and exploding near us; but the night soon came on, the firing ceased, and the boats ran up to Norfolk to wait till morning, when they intended to return, capture the Minnesota and other vessels of war, shell us out, and land a force to hold this post. They would have done it too if Ericsson's floating battery, the Monitor, had not arrived during the night. 

As soon as it was dark, the flames broke through the deck of the Congress (she had been on fire below some time,) and mounted the masts and rigging of the doomed frigate, and she was soon enveloped in flames from stem to stern, which cast a lurid glare over the water and on the camp. She lay broadside to the camp. About 8 P. M. the fire began to affect the guns, which were loaded. It was a fearful, yet grand, sight to see that noble vessel blazing like a huge pyramid, to hear the booming of the bursting guns and have the balls whizzing over our heads, fired by no mortal hand. One of the shot struck a schooner and sunk her near to our wharf. We went to sleep in the midst of this sublime scene, with the shot still flying over us. At 1 o'clock, every man in camp was startled by the explosion of the magazine; it shook the ground like an earthquake; the whole firmament was filled by the burning splinters and sparks of fire. 

Sunday, the 9th, was as beautiful a day as ever dawned on this troubled Union. We were up at daylight, to see the re-commencement of the fight. At 8 o'clock, the Merrimac, Patrick Henry and Yorktown, came down from Norfolk to engage and take the Minnesota, which lay aground off here; but when the Merrimac got within three miles, the Monitor came out from behind her and bore directly for the Merrimac —the other two rebel boats ran off. The Rebels were very much surprised to see the Monitor; they neither knew where it came from, or what it was. The Rebels fired the first shot, and thus opened the engagement. The Monitor engaged the Merrimac, and it was a novel sight to see these two ironclad steamers firing upon each other without serious damage to either, and all this time not a man could be seen on either vessel. After five hours firing, the Monitor drove off the Merrimac, with some considerable damage. While they were fighting on the river, the long roll beat in the camp, for the Rebels had come down by land to within three miles of us. They were sent to cut us off in our retreat when the Merrimac should have driven us out. It was a well contrived plan, and came very near being successful. Had the Monitor been delayed a few hours, we should not now be at Newport News. 

SETH W. PATY.

Secession Movements in England (1862)

Source: The Polynesian. Honolulu: Saturday, April 26, 1862

The rebel emissaries in England, Messrs. Yancey, Rost and Man, have addressed a letter to Earl Russel, representing the secession of seven of the Southern States, and asking a recognition of the Confederacy. The Commissioners claim that the Federal Government "has not been able to retake a single fortification of which the Confederate States possessed themselves; but, on the contrary has been driven out from a mighty fortress upon the Atlantic, and from several forts on the Western frontier, by the Confederate arms; that it has not been able to advance more than five miles into the territory of any of the Confederate States where there was any serious attempt to prevent it; and is in danger of losing three great States of the Union by insurrection."

The effectuality of the blockade is denied, and the argument put forth that England can have no sympathy with the North, as the Administration, Congress and the Federal Generals have repeatedly, by proclamation, legislation, and military orders, demonstrated that the war is not a raid upon slavery, but "is waged on order to uphold that (pro-slavery) Constitution, and to enforce the laws (many of them pro-slavery)." Hence they conclude that the anti-slavery sentiment of England can have no sympathy with the North, but will be disgusted at its "canting hypocrisy." 

The Bull Run reverse the Union army s magnified to the greatest proportions, and the superior advantages which might be derived by England from an interference with the blockade in securing cotton now being gathered, assiduously urged.

If, however, the English Government fails to extend assistance to the South, "its citizens will buckle themselves to the great task before them with a vigor and determination that will justify the undersigned in having pressed the question upon the attention of Her Britannic Majesty's Government.

To this communication Earl Russell replies that "the British Government dot not pretend in any way to pronounce a judgment upon the questions in debate between the United States and their adversaries in North America;" and states that the Queen will strictly perform the duties which belong to a neutral, and "cannot undertake to determine by anticipation what may be the issue of the contest, nor can she acknowledge the independence of the nine States which are now combined against the President and Congress of the United States, until fortune of arms or the more peaceful mode of negotiation shall have more clearly determined the respective positions of the two belligerents." 

Correspondence: Christian Sentiments (1861)

Source: The Polynesian. Honolulu: Saturday, June 8, 1861

MR. EDITOR:-You must charitably excuse me if I slightly call in question your article last week under the editorial imprimatur on the subject of "Christian Sentiments." 

Are you an American secessionist or are you not? Your articles is generally construed to imply the former position, though I think I may assume that nothing was farther from your intention. 

The contest gong on in the United States is clearly a contest of "moral principles and civil rights." Under no other view can secession make for itself the slightest shadow of defense. 

It is not a contest, as you appear to suppose, of "political pretensions," unless you speak in the sense of revolutionary right.

The right of revolution under the exigency of extreme opposition is to be admitted. Governments are instituted for the welfare of the people over whom they are established, and when they altogether fail in that purpose, it is competent to set them aside and create other institutions in their stead.

Under the Constitution of the United States, "secession" is an enormity. There are no "political pretensions" involved in it, aside from revolution. Secession is revolution, and more than revolution-it is treason. Let us refer, for a brief manner, to history. One of the prominent States of the Union demanded admission, on the condition of withdrawal, if the working of the system did not suit her interests. The qualified accession was effused by the Fathers to the Republic. Jefferson and Madison, and all the distinguished Statesmen of the day, held that, the Government, once established under the Federal Constitution, was conclusive as to all the parties to which it related. In that period, there was no idea of secession, or of sovereignties within the Union, capable of determining at will the limits of their own laws of allegiance. 

Secession is a modern affair. It was grown out of the theories of Mr. Calhoun, promulgated nearly thirty years ago, and maintained by his followers up to the present time. 

Slavery has had much, in appearance, to do with the matter. But since 1820, what has been the real significance of that question? The Missouri difficulty once settled, there was no trouble to be encountered, had no ambitious aspirants undertaken to remove the old landmarks, universally recognized by the whole country as fixed forever. 

In 1832, the rate of tariff duties was the chief point in controversy.

Now the bugbear of slavery reappears. It is all pretense. There is no sincerity in the profession of politicians in regard to it. On the part of the Cotton States, the purpose of withdrawal from the Union has long existed. The living generation of those States has been nursed and educated in the sentiment of hostility to "Yankee institutions." Treason has had its quiet incubation, and at length has hatched a most pestiferous brood of disorders and crimes. 

Howe unfortunate that two years since there was no Jackson at the head of affairs! He would have put his iron heel, without remorse, upon the neck of the rebellion. The Yancey's, the Beecher's, and all the multifarious brood of political scorpions would have been trodden into the dust. 

Poor, old, Mr. Buchanan! he deserves sympathy, though he wanted all the qualities of a leader in Troublous times. He might have saved his country, but he devoted it to ruin in order to vent a narrow spite on Douglas, who gave him his high position. History will declare him corrupt-but it is to be hoped that the memory of Covode will die out, before the final record of his administration is stereotyped.

There have been mutual wrongs between North and South. This cannot be denied. The personal liberty laws were an outrage and a violation of the Constitution. But what on the other hand is to be said of post office espionage, the courts of Judge Lynch, the denunciation of free speech, and the old attempt at nullification now revived, reeking with more invertebrate treason, under the name of secession!

In God's name, let it be asked, for the sake of peace, what is required to propitiate the demon of secession? Will nothing answer but revolution? Are brothers to wash their hands in fratricidal blood? Are neighbors to cut each other's throats because Mr. Buchanan was unable to crush Douglas and foist Breckenridge into the Presidential chair?

But let the issue come. It is better settled now than hereafter. There should at once be an end of controversy. 

I agree with Mr. Dickinson and Mr. Sickles, that it would be far better to have all the Cotton States sunk into the depths of the ocean than to see the American Union broken into fragments.

Allow me to ask why you have thought fit to bestow a sneer on Mr. Sickles? Do you know him? I am confident that if you had that honor, your tone of censure would be turned to praise. That he has been unfortunate in regard to domestic relations must be conceded, but I am not aware that any man's domestic affairs, beyond the verdict of his country and the laws of his residence. By these tests he stands acquitted, and you have no fair reason to make him a mark of contempt, even for the purpose of a point in favor of American secession, which I am confident you abhor from your inmost soul.

In conclusion, I will remark that it was unseemly that the Hawaiian Government organ should, even by indirection, stand before the world as an endorser of treason against American institutions. We are on terms of political relationship with the United States. There is resident here a Commissioner of that country, supposed to be loyal and true to the laws and the lawful authorities at Washington. He believes in the theory of the Constitution; he knows that the President holds, in a proper manner, the executive power of the country in his hands; he respects the ability of Mr. Lincoln, and will resent, though adverse in political sentiment, the application of any disrespectful epithet to his character. 

There are also resident Consuls, holding proper commissions from the President. Their feelings, as well as those of the Commissioner, should be respected. Hence I have inferred that on grounds of comity, as well as on grounds of constitutional right, you ought not to maker yourself a partisan of secession.

So far as your points bear upon the Advertiser, I have not a word to say. Should you fight it out after the manner of the Killkenny cats, I shall look on, inclined in your favor, and if the head of the Polynesian is safe, when the tail of the Advertiser disappears, it will afford me pleasure to greet your escape from an unpleasant conflict.

The conclusion of the whole matter, which I wish to convey, is this:

The secession of an American State from the Federal Union is treason-joust as much treason as would be the revolt of Kauai from his Hawaiian Majesty's allegiance. 
June 4, 1861.       J.B. STEILACOMB.

We insert the above communication only because is embodies a misconception of what we said last week on the subject of the American difficulty and the civil war there existing, and because, personally and officially, it accuses us of opinions and motives which we neither entertained for expressed.

We were simple enough to think that the moral of our remarks upon the Christian Advocate would have been evident to every Christian reader at a glance, and that the desire of a strictly and professedly Christian journal to "sacrifice a million of lives" to maintain a political dogma, be it ever so good, ever so cherished, working ever so well, was strangely inconsistent with that evangel which teaches "peace on earth, good will to man, and glory to God in the highest." Our allusion to Mr. Sickles was not intended as personal or offensive, but as distinctive and representative of a class of politicians who, without reference to the religious aspect of the question, in rigorously carrying out their political creed to its logical consequences arrive to the same wholesale conclusion as the Christian Advocate, whose conscience was bound to preach wisdom, moderation, forbearance, instead of fanning the flames of bitterness and contention. 

We might have used the name of any prominent politician of the same opinions, as an illustration, had it occurred to us; and if our correspondent insists that our words must be construed as personal and unkind, we will willingly retract them, and insert his name as a representative man instead of Mr. S. 

We have the highest respect for our correspondents erudition in the political and domestic relations which obtain in the United States. Secession may be treason, and rightly so construed, according to the manner and circumstances under which it is effected. It is for them to judge, and not us. But that to wish the sacrifice of a million lives, or the entire South sunk in the Ocean, or religion-at least Christian religion-we are far from being convinced of; and further our remarks were not intended to go, nor could they by any fair construction be made to go.

Our correspondent says, "that it is unseemly that the Hawaiian Government Organ should even by indirection stand before the world as an endorser of treason against American institutions." We might pass over the above gratuitous charge with the silence which it deserves, knowing well that minds with strong proclivities, and deeply excited, always see the shadow of the hopes or fears that agitate them for the moment in whatever may be said or done around them. We are not conscious of ever having directly or indirectly advocated treason against the United States or their institutions. On the contrary, we admired them from afar, in our younger days, as the hope of the oppressed and the scourge of their tyrants; we lived under them in mature age, and the reminiscence is as vivid and as cherished as any other that memory brings back; we have batted for many years for introduction in this country of such of them as were rationally consistent with the condition and intelligence of this people, and we have never for a moment lost sight of how much the civilization and progress of this country owes to American good will, enterprise, industry and capital. And when in the last week's issue of the Polynesian we referred to the civil war in the United States, we did so in grief and sorrow, yet in a language that was alike calm, dignified, kind and becoming in a friend of humanity and an officer of a friendly government.

We have reason to think, and are vain enough to believe, that "unseemly" actions and indiscreet and unkind words are not coupled with our name by those who know us well, either personally or through our journal, and we candidly confess that we fail to see, even were the 416th Section of the Civil Code not enacted, wherein we have compromised the relations or character of the Hawaiian Government in any of our writings since we have had the honor of being the Director of the Polynesian. 

The Monitor [From the "Weekly Alta California," April 12th.] (1862)

Source: The Polynesian. Honolulu: May 3, 1862

The New York papers censure severely the Secretary of the Navy for not having made provisions earlier to meet the Merrimac. If the Monitor had been delayed in her passage only one day, the rebel floating battery would, beyond question, have cleaned out all the shipping in Hampton Roads, and could not have been prevented from shelling the President himself out of the White House.

It was one of the most remarkable naval engagements on record. The Monitor, according to the wood-cuts which have been received, is something very difficult to describe with pen and ink. Its general appearance is that of a flat-boat, sharp at both ends, with a round tower in the centre, from which two guns protrude from the opposite sides. Her construction is such that she could only be struck on deck from a higher point, and the deck being heavily plated, the balls of course must glance without doing any damage.

According to the report of the right, which will be found elsewhere, she sailed around and around the Merrimac, at such close quarters as almost to touch, delivering her fire with the greatest precision and deliberation. It is narrated that both vessels fired several times lying almost alongside each other, and the crashing and smashing of the balls must have been terrific. An English officer who witnessed the fight is reported to have said that there is not a ship in the English navy that could withstand the Monitor, and her achievements in Hampton Roads go far to establish the correctness of the assertion. Neither the Warrior nor the La Gloire could do her much damage, for being nay eighteen inches above the water when in fighting condition, they would not have much service at which to direct their enormous batteries. They could only hope to gain a victory by running her down, but in her fight with the Merrimac, it is possible that she is altogether too nimble for such a movement to be executed with success.

The inventor of this most extraordinary battery is John Ericsson, a native of the Province of Wermeland [Varmland], Sweden. He was born in 1803. The son of a mining proprietor, his earliest impressions were derived from get engines and machinery of the mines. In 1814 he attracted the attention of the celebrated Count Platen, the intimate friend of Bernadotte, and being appointed a cadet in the Engineers, was employed as a nivelear  at the Grand Ship Canal, where he cut out the work for more than one hundred soldiers. In 1826 he obtained leave of absence for a visit to England, with the view of introducing his invention of a flame engine, which he had exhibited in a machine of ten horse power. This engine did not meet his expectations, and involved heavy expenditures, which induced him to resign his commission and devote himself to mechanical pursuits. Numerous inventions followed, among which may be mentioned the steam boiler on the principle of artificial draught, which was applied to railway locomotives in the Liverpool and Manchester road, in the fall of 1829.

But it was not till 1833 that he reduced to practice his long-cherished project of a caloric engine, and submitted the result to the scientific world in London. The invention excited very general interest, and lectures were delivered upon it by Dr. Lardiner and Professor Faraday. Dr. Andrew Ure was daring enough to say that the invention would throw the name of his great countryman, James Watt, in the shade; but practical experience has demonstrated the face that it is not very well adapted to purposes of navigation, for though the consumption of coal is only trifling, and the working of the machinery perfect, the speed attained by the Ericsson, built by him in New York in 1852, was not sufficient to meet the exigencies of commerce.

Ericsson next directed his attention to navigation, the result of which was the invention of the propeller, and of that new arrangement of the steam machinery in ships of war which has revolutionized the navies of the world. He sought to bring these inventions to the favorable notice of the British Admiralty, and was listened to with polite but incredulous attention. He found a more confiding listener in Captain R.F. Stockton, of the United States Navy, by whose influence with the Administration at Washington he was placed in a position to carry out his plans. He came to New York in 1839, and in 1841 was employed in the construction of the United States ship-of-war Princeton, which was the first steamship ever built with the propelling machinery under the water line, and out of reach of shot. 

He has been for many years a resident of Williamsburg, N.Y., and is a citizen of the United States. To his genius we owe our last escape from a great national calamity. There is no knowing what damage the Merrimac would have done but for the opportune appearance of his new invention-the Monitor. This fight will also revolutionize the whole system of coast defences- at least in such remote regions as the Pacific. One or two Monitors, with a monster floating battery constructed after the fashion of the Merrimac, will be hereafter sufficient for the protection of any of our harbors. None of these iron monsters which are now being constructed in the old world could reach us, and one "Monitor" would be more than a match for a fleet of the old style ships.

The Great Conspiracy and England's Neutrality (Part Four) January, 1862

THE GREAT CONSPIRACY, and England's Neutrality. (Part Four of Four)

An Address delivered at Mount Kisco, New York, on the Fourth of July, 1861, the Eighty-Sixth Anniversary of American Independence. 

Source: Pacific Commercial Advertiser. Honolulu: January 30, 1862.

By John Jay, Esq. 

[Concluded from our last]

FOREIGN ENTANGLEMENTS INSEPARABLE FROM DISUNION

Let the American Union be dismembered, and what is to prevent foreign powers from re-entering upon our national domain from which at such great cost and labour they have been ousted?

An old officer of the French empire writing to the Courrier des Etats-Unis, has predicted that in the first place France would retake Louisiana, according to ancient treaties, that Spain would reclaim Florida, that England perhaps would seek to appropriate Oregon, and that Mexico, under foreign protection, would retake New Mexico, Texas and California; or supposing that we should consent to the establishment of the so-called Southern Confederacy, which we know to be a mere military despotism, what possible guarantee can we have for peace in. the future, when each state reserves the right to secede at pleasure and enter at will into foreign alliances inaugurating universal chaos and chronic dissolution! Even now, while the struggle is being waged, the leading men of South Carolina, already sick of their independence before it is accomplished, repudiate republican institutions and sigh for a British prince to lend the odor of royalty to the aristocracy which they boast—an aristocracy based not upon historic deeds and noble heroism, but simply upon the color of their skins, and their despotic dominion over helpless slaves :—an aristocracy whose wealth is invested in human flesh, and whose revenues are collected in the field by the lash, and on the auction-block by the hammer!

Let our Union be divided with the view of accomplishing present peace, and not only would the United States fall from her position of a first class power to that of a minor republic, with a contracted sea-board and a defenseless border: but the act of separation would inaugurate an exposure to hostilities,—first from our new and unfriendly neighbor, and then from every foreign power with which one or all of the Southern States might choose to form an alliance. Either contingency would necessarily change our national policy, require the maintenance of a standing army, and complicate endlessly our commercial relations. Now, we stand aloof from the quarrels of the rest of the world and can devote our energies to the development of our marvelous resources and the extension of civilization and freedom over the American continent; then we should be compelled to an attitude of perpetual self-defense to save us from constant entanglement in the web of European politics. Already have we had a foretaste of the sort of treatment which Europe will accord to the severed fragments of the American Republic.

To maintain the respect of the world we must maintain first the integrity of our national territory, and next the integrity of our fundamental principles. As for the argument that if the rebellion is crushed harmony can never be restored, Canada furnishes the refutation. The bloody feuds of 1838 have hardly left a trace to mar the tranquil prosperity which marks the progress of that great province. There is reason to believe that the Union men of the South await but the coming of the federal forces in sufficient strength, to show themselves again the cordial supporters of the federal government. But even if this were not so, and there was reason to fear a long period of distrust and disaffection, the fact remains that the interests of the American people imperatively demand that the integrity of the union shall be preserved, whether the slavery propagandists of the South like it or like it not.

WE MUST FIGHT

This is one of those decisive epochs that occur in the history of all great nations came to our fathers in 1776. Submission to usurped authority, or national independence, was the issue: and on the day we commemorate they chose the latter; and the force of their example on the world is yet to be determined. To day the imperious demand comes from slavery, "submit or be destroyed!" Already has a blow been struck by slavery at our Republic the force of which reverberates through the world. Two hundred millions of debts due from rebels to loyal citizens are repudiated, the business of the country is arrested, bankruptcy stares us in the face; worse than all, our flag has been insulted, our prestige impaired, and, from foreign courts, we have received treatment that our American pride can really brook. Honor, interest, self-respect and the highest duty call upon us to crush, and crush speedily, the insolent traitors whose secret and atrocious perfidy has temporarily crippled us: and while we recall the motives that combine to compel us to resistance, let us not forget the duty which this nation owes to the oppressed race who arc the innocent cause of all our troubles, and who have no friends to look to but. ourselves, to prevent the spreading of slavery over every foot of American territory, and the waving of the flag of the slave trader over the fearful horrors of the Middle Passage.

Gentlemen, as in our revolutionary struggle our fathers had to contend with the timid and the avaricious, who feared the evils of war and continually cried peace! peace! where there was no peace, so may we expect to be constantly hampered by declaimers in favor of compromise. I do not stop to consider the fitness of our lending an ear to such a cry until the insult to our flag has been atoned for and until our supremacy is acknowledged, for the great mass of the people of the country will be unanimous on this point; they will regard the bare suggestion of treating with the rebels whose hands are stained with the blood of the sons of Massachusetts, of Ellsworth and of Winthrop, of Greble and of Ward, as a personal insult, and will reply to it as did Patrick Henry—"We must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight!" The sword is now the only pen with which we can write "peace" in enduring characters on the map of America.

The day of compromise is gone: "that sort of thing," as the secretary said, " ended with the fourth of March." We have had devices enough for saving the Union, devices suggested by the men who are now striving to destroy it.

There is one good old plan provided by the Constitution that was successfully practiced by Washington and Jackson; we are about to try that; let us try it thoroughly; it is simply the due execution of the laws by whatever degree of force the exigency may require. If our army of 300,000 men is insufficient, a million stand ready to follow them to the field.

THE DIGNITY OF OUR POSITION AND DUTIES

It would be difficult, my countrymen, to exaggerate the solemn importance of our national position. A struggle for life and death has commenced between freedom and slavery, and on the event of the struggle depends our national existence. Let us falter, let us compromise, let us yield: and the work of our fathers and the inheritance of our children, our own honor and the hopes of the oppressed nationalities of the world will be buried in a common grave! Let us be demoralized by defeat in the field, or what is infinitely worse, by submission to rebellion, and in foreign lands a man will blush and hang his head to declare himself an American citizen. A whipped hound should be the emblem of the Northern man who whimpers for a peace that can only be gained by dishonor.

But let us remember our fathers who, eighty-five years ago, this day, made universal freedom and equal right, the corner stone of this Republic; let us exhibit, as we have begun to do, their stern resolve and high devotion in behalf of constitutional freedom, and we shall secure for our children and our children's children a gigantic and glorious nationality, based upon principles of Christian civilization, such as the world has never seen before.

There is nothing impossible, nothing improbable in our speedy realization of a glorious future.

The seeds of this rebellion have long lurked in our system; for years it has been coming to a head, and simply from want of proper treatment, it has now burst with angry violence : but the pulse of the nation beats cooly and calmly, the partial local inflammation but serves to exhibit the lusty health of the body politic, and when this rebellion is extinguished, and its cause removed, we may hope that we are sale from an organized rebellion for at least a century to come.

With what speed this rebellion shall be crushed, depends solely upon yourselves. Let public feeling lag throughout the land, and the War Department will lag in Washington. Let us become careless and indifferent about the matter, and contractors will cheat our soldiers, incompetent officers will expose them to defeat, official indifference will produce general demoralization.

But let us keep ever in mind the lesson we have so dearly learned—that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Let the administration and the army feel that their every act is canvassed by an intelligent people, and when approved, greeted by a hearty appreciation : that every branch of industry awaits the ending of the war, and that from every part of the land comes the cry of "forward," and the arm of the union at Washington will obey the heart of the nation, whenever a prayer rises in its behalf, or its flag kisses the breeze of heaven.

Let us with this sleepless vigilance on our part, repose a generous confidence in our president who has won the generous applause of his democratic opponents, nor scan too impatiently the warlike policy of Scott.

Like all true-hearted and brave veterans he wishes to spare as far as possible the blood alike of loyal soldiers and deluded rebels, and to carry with the flag of our union not simply the power to make it respected but the more glorious attributes that cause it to be loved. "Not," to adopt the words of Gov. Andrew, of Massachusetts, "to inaugurate a war of sections, not to avenge former wrongs, not to perpetuate ancient griefs or memories of conflict," will that flag move onwards until it floats again in its pride and beauty over Richmond and Sumpter,and Montgomery, and New Orleans: but to indicate the majesty of the people, to retain and re-invigorate the institutions of our fathers, to rescue from the despotism of traitors the loyal citizens of the South, and place all loyal or rebel, under the protection of a union that is essential to the welfare of the whole.

The eyes of the whole world are this day fixed upon you. To Europeans themselves, European questions sink to insignificance compared with the American question now to be decided. Rise, my countrymen as did our fathers on the day we celebrate, to the majestic grandeur of this question in its two-fold aspect, as regards America, and as regards the world. Remember that with the failure of the American republic will fall the wisest system of Republican Government which the wisdom of man has yet invented, and the hopes of popular freedom cherished throughout the globe.

Let us, standing by our fathers' graves, swear anew and teach the oath to our children, that with God's help the American Republic, clasping this continent in its embrace shall stand unmoved, though all the powers of slavery, piracy, and European jealousy should combine to overthrow it; that we shall have in the future, as we have had in the past, one country, one constitution and one destiny; and that when we shall have passed from earth and the acts of to-day shall be matter of history, and the dark power now seeking our overthrow shall have been itself overthrown, our sons may gather strength from our example in every contest with despotism that time may have in store to try their virtue, and that they may rally under the stars and stripes to battle for freedom and the rights of man, with our olden war cry, "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable."

The Great Conspiracy and England's Neutrality (Part Three of Four) January, 1862

THE GREAT CONSPIRACY, and England's Neutrality. (Part Three of Four)

An Address delivered at Mount Kisco, New York, on the Fourth of July, 1861, the Eighty-Sixth Anniversary of American Independence. 

Source: Pacific Commercial Advertiser. Honolulu: January 23, 1862.

By John Jay, Esq. 

[Continued from our last]

ENGLAND'S NEUTRALITY

In this crisis of our national history it is natural that we should regard with interest the view taken of our course by the great powers of Europe, and especially by that country, with which, as colonies, we were so long connected, and which, despite the two wars that have been waged between us, we are accustomed to remember as our mother-land. Mingled with our Dutch and Huguenot ancestry, a very large proportion of the older families of America trace their descent from England, and many who do not are yet connected with her by no common ties. For myself, I may say that I have always entertained for her people an hereditary feeling of attachment, from the fact that my Huguenot ancestors, when they fled from Rochelle after the revocation by Louis XIV of the Edict of Nantz, found upon her soil a welcome and a home: and that one of them volunteering for King William against James II, shed his blood for English freedom at the Battle of the Boyne, that great era in English history, ending, as we hope forever her civil wars, from which dates the establishment on a firm basis, of the unity, the strength and the world-wide dominion of the British Empire. Such memories, and doubtless, my countrymen, you have many such, descend from father to son undimmed by national revolutions. They inspire sentiments of affection and kinship, that like family heir-looms gather new value from the lapse of time, and instead of fading as years and centuries roll by, seem the more sacred and imperishable from the thought of the generations by whom they have been cherished and who have each in turn added a link to the chain of association.

The recent visit of the Prince of Wales, coming to us as the representative of the British nation, characterized, as it was, by the most graceful courtesy and cordiality on his part, and by the heartiest welcome upon ours, with the single exception of the rude treatment he met at Richmond—now the head-quarters of the rebels—had accomplished what no diplomacy could have effected. It seemed to have blotted out the last lingering remnant of ill-feeling, and left on this side the Atlantic at least, the belief that henceforth there was a firm alliance between England and America, not based on treaty stipulations, but upon that heartfelt cordiality which springs from mutual regard, and from a common devotion to the great principles of right which belong to the institutions of both countries and which their example is recommending to the world; nor should we overlook the belief cherished by many thoughtful men that if in the distant future England should be set upon by the despotisms of Europe, and should require the aid of her American daughter to save her from annihilation, that aid would be promptly, effectively and cordially given.

It is with profound regret that we have seen that friendly feeling suddenly converted into one of intense and bitter disappointment by the conduct and tone of the English government and the ill-judged comments of the English press.

The election of Mr. Lincoln for the first time entitled to the control of the federal government, a party with whose political principles the English people were supposed to sympathize. By a scheme of treachery unparalleled in baseness, a few of the defeated faction holding office in the Cabinet, in Congress, in the army and in the navy, conspired together to betray the forts arsenals and other property of the government into the hands of their confederates, with the view of destroying the Union, and erecting upon its ruins a Southern confederacy, of which slavery is to be the grand permanent and distinguishing characteristic. They accomplish the seizure of the public property without difficulty, for they themselves were entrusted with its guardianship, and they proceed to develop the great conspiracy and organize the rebel government, while the loyal citizens of the United States are helplessly compelled to await the inauguration of the new president. The 4th of March arrives at last, Mr. Lincoln takes the oath to maintain the Constitution and the laws, and when in obedience to that oath he orders the rebels to disperse, and calls upon the country for assistance, the loyal states, as one man, prepare to crush the conspiracy and restore the integrity and the honor of the nation. Neither from England nor from any foreign power have we asked or would we accept assistance in regulating our own household, but from England, of all the states of the world, we thought we had a right to expect a ready sympathy, and that moral support which is given by the countenance of a great nation.

The Southern rebels also counted upon the support of England, on the simple ground that her interest in cotton would incline her to their side, but we although well aware of the demoralizing effect of interest upon national principle's, still believed it impossible that the British government could consent from pecuniary motives to look with complacency on the progress of a rebellion whose only strength was gained by treachery, and which was avowedly prosecuted for the maintenance of a system which England herself had taught the world to regard with abhorence. In thus believing, we were confirmed by the tone of the English press when the insurrection first began, one of the ablest representatives of which indignantly declared in substance that Manchester and Birmingham would be the first to reject as an insult, the idea that they were to be moved from their position by pecuniary appeals, and that if any British cabinet should sacrifice the anti-slavery principles of the nation to the question of cotton, England would lose, and deservedly lose, her place at the council table of Europe.

The exclamation of Lord John Russell in reply to a question as to the position of England, "For God's sake let us keep out of it," was followed by what is termed a proclamation of neutrality in which British subjects are forbidden to render assistance to either the United States on the one hand, or the states calling themselves the Confederate States on the other, both of which parties are recognized by the proclamation as "belligerents."

The British government is accustomed to preserve an attitude of neutrality towards contending nations, but it would seem that neutrality does not so far interfere with the sympathies and freedom of its subjects as to compel it to issue proclamations against Irishmen enlisting with Francis Joseph, or Englishmen fighting or Victor Emanuel and Garibaldi.

EFFECT OF THE PROCLAMATION.

The proclamation in this case is so warmly eulogized by the British press as precisely the proclamation demanded by the crisis, they profess such profound astonishment that the American people are not satisfied with it, and rate so severely Mr. Cassius M. Clay for expressing with western bluntness his frank surprise, that I will dwell for a moment on what seems to be its meaning and effect.

What has the proclamation effected? How did we stand before it was issued, and how do we stand now?

In the case of the United States, the laws of England and its treaty stipulations with our government already forbade its subjects from engaging in a conspiracy to overthrow our institutions. The proclamation, therefore, in forbidding English subjects to fight in the service of the rebels against the United States, simply declared the law as it was already understood; while in forbidding Englishmen to fight for the United States against the rebels, it intervened to change the existing practice, to revive the almost obsolete act of Geo. III forbidding English subjects from engaging in foreign service without the royal consent, which had slumbered in regard to Austria and Italy, for the purpose of forbidding Englishmen from assisting to maintain in the United States constitutional order against conspiracy and rebellion, and the cause of freedom against chattel slavery.

The first effect of the proclamation, therefore, was to change the position in which England and Englishmen stood to the United States, to the disadvantage of the latter. Before the proclamation, for an Englishman to serve the United States government in maintaining its integrity was regarded honorable; after the proclamation such service became a crime. The proclamation makes it an offense now for an Englishman to fight for the government at Washington as great as it was for Englishmen before the proclamation to fight for the rebels of Moutgomery. It thus, in a moral view, lowered the American government to the level of the rebel confederacy, and in the next place, it proceeded, in an international view, to place the rebel confederacy on a par with the American government by recognizing them, not as rebels and insurgents to be dealt with by our government as our Constitution and laws should determine, but as a belligerent power, to be classed with the United States (of which they were but a rebellious fraction ) and equally entitled with the United States to the rights of belligerents under the law of nations.

No ingenuity can blind us to these facts :—Before the proclamation, to support our government was an honorable office for the subjects of Great Britain, and the rebels were insurgents with no rights save under the American Constitution. After the proclamation for an Englishman to serve the United States is a crime and the rebels are elevated into a belligerent power—and this intervention of England, depriving us of a support which her practice permitted, and giving the rebels a status and right they did not possess, we are coolly told is neutrality. Dr. Johnson in his famous letter gave us a sketch of a Chesterfieldean patron seeing a man struggling for life in the water, and when he reached ground encumbering him with help. Lord John has taught us the meaning of 'British neutrality towards a nation supposed to be in like condition. Let us trust that the English people will not endorse the definition.

What would England have said to such a proclamation of neutrality from us in her domestic troubles in Canada, in Ireland or in India? What would the English people have thought of a state paper from Washington, declaring it the sovereign will of the people of the United States to remain perfectly neutral in the contest being waged in Hindostan between the British government on the one side and the Mogul dynasty on the other, and forbidding American citizens to enter the service of either of the said belligerents. What would they have thought of the American president intimating with cold etiquette that it was a matter of profound indifference to this government which of the belligerents should be victorious, the king of Oude and Nana Sahib, or Lord Canning and the immortal Havelock. Or is it that the British have become so enamored of rebellion, aye and of treachery too among their sepoys, that they thus court our great mogul and his fellow traitors of Montgomery?

This queen's proclamation strikes not simply at the moral position of our government, but according to the English press, it strikes also at our right to execute our own laws against piracy; and we are told by the London Times that if we venture to hang under these laws, a pirate who is licensed to plunder and murder by Jefferson Davis's letters of marque, now endorsed by the sovereigns of England and France, it will be regarded as an outrage by the civilized world; and this gentle intimation comes to us from a nation who are hardly recovered from the effects of of a rebellion, to end which, without staying to ask the opinion of the world, they blew their rebels from the guns.

It was intimated that the British cabinet were puzzled how to act in regard to the United States on the one hand, and her rebel conspirators on the other, and that after a careful search for precedents, one was found in the royal proclamation touching the war between Greece and Turkey, and that on that was based the proclamation which has so displeased and wounded the American people.

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY IN CANADA

It could not have escaped the Cabinet in their search for precedents, for we know with what thoroughness such searches are made, that a very similar state of  things existed but a few years since between Great Britain and the United States, when the in- tegrity and honor of the British Empire were assailed by her Canadian colonists, and she had occasion to learn what in the opinion of the United States constitutes the duties of neutrality towards a friendly nation. Unsuccessful rebellions are soon forgotten, and perhaps many Englishmen may be surprised on being told that the Canadian rebellion was so deeply seated and so widely spread, as seriously to threaten the crown with the loss of the Canadas. Mr. Leader declared in Parliament that all the English government could do, would be to subjugate and hold the principal cities, leaving the country occupied by rebels. The number of British troops under Sir John Colbourne was only 20,000, while the rebels are said to have had 14,000 at Montreal, 4000 at Napiersville, and thousands more in arms in different parts of the Canadas, fierce with indignation at the murder of a party of patriots by Indians in the employ of the British government.

In November '37 two battles were fought between the British and the rebels, the one at St. Dennis, and the other at St. Charles which was taken from a force of three thousand Canadians of whom two hundred were killed, and thirty wounded.

In December, Mackenzie, the head rebel, who seems to have been the prototype of Davis, organized a provisional government, and assuming the right to dispose of "ten millions of acres of land, fair and fertile," took possession of Montgomery House near Toronto, with a band of insurgents, and sent a demand to Sir Francis B. Head to dissolve the provincial parliament, and to leave Toronto within fifteen days.

Then came Lord Gosford's proclamation at Quebec, declaring martial law, and denouncing the conspiracy and rebellion, and on the 8th of January 1838 came the first proclamation from President Van Buren. After reciting the efforts made by him and by the governors of New York and Vermont to prevent interference on the part of our citizens in the contest unfortunately commenced in the British provinces, and notwithstanding the presence of the civil officers of the United States who by his direction, had visited the scenes of commotion, arms and amunition have been procured by the insurgents, in the United States, the proclamation proceeded:-

"Now, therefore, to the end that the authority of the laws may be maintained and the faith of treaties observed, I, Martin Van Buren, do most earnestly exhort all citizens of the United States who have violated their duties to return peaceably to their respective homes, and I hereby warn them that any persons who shall compromise the neutrality of this government by interfering in an unlawful manner with the affairs of the neighboring British provinces will render themselves liable to arrest and punishment under the laws of the United States," &c, &c.

At the request of Lord Durham, Mr. Van Buren had directed our commanding officer on Lake Ontario to co-operate in any measures which might be suggested by Lord Durham for rooting out the band of pirates who had their quarters among "the thousand isles," without the slightest regard to the official proclamation of their chief, Mr. William Johnson, holding a commission from the patriot government, that the patriots would carefully respect neutral waters and the rights of all citizens of the United States.

On the 21st November, 1838, president Van Buren issued a second proclamation, calling upon the misguided and deluded persons to abandon projects dangerous to their own country, fatal to those whom they profess a desire to relieve, impracticable of execution without foreign aid, which they cannot rationally expect to obtain, and giving rise to imputations, however unfounded, against the honor and good faith of their own government.

The proclamation further called upon " every officer, civil and military, and upon every citizen, by the veneration due by all freemen to the laws which they have assisted to enact for their own government, by his regard for the honor and good faith of his country, by his love of honor and respect for that sacred code of laws by which national intercourse is regulated, to use every power to arrest for trial and punishment every offender against the laws providing for the performance of our obligations to the other powers of the world."

On the 4th of December, 1838, the president, in his message to Congress, declared, "If an insurrection existed in Canada the amicable disposition of the United States, as well as their duty to themselves, would lead them to maintain a strict neutrality, and to restrain its citizens from all violation of the laws which have been passed for its enforcement. But the government recognizes a still higher obligation to repress all attempts on the part of its citizens to disturb the peace of a country where order prevails or has been re-established."

Such was the neutrality on the part of the United States towards Great Britain. It recognized the rebels of Canada not as belligerents, but as insurgents, and it enforced its neutrality not by forbidding its citizens to assist Great Britain to maintain its authority against the insurgents, but by forbidding them to interfere in an unlawful manner with the affairs of the Provinces.

It needs no intimate knowledge of international law, no study of Grotius, or Puffendorf, or Vattel, or Wheaton, no definitions of the rights of belligerents and privateers from the Consolatodel Mare, from Lampredi, Galiani, Moser or Hiibner, to enable us to appreciate the wide difference between the neutrality we practiced towards England and her rebels, and that which England has inaugurated against us; and no refinement of reasoning, nor subtle glosses indulged in by the English press, have at all blinded the American people to the unfriendly character of this royal proclamation.

The recognition of the independence of the Southern Confederacy is a matter in the discretion of England, and of all foreign nations. When this independence is established as a matter of fact we expect it to be recognized, but England does not so recognize it. She recognizes the confederacy as simply struggling for independence as were the insurgents in Canada, and pending the struggle she volunteers under professions of neutrality to ignore our constitutional right to subdue them, and to recognize their rebellion as lawful war. Bound to us by treaty stipulations, she elevates them to an equality of position as regards belligerent rights under the law of nations. She places their usurped government, based on treachery and slavery, on a par with that founded by Washington and his associates on the broad consent of the American people. She introduces Jefferson Davis and his confederates to a limited extent into the family of nations, endorses the licenses given by them to pirates whose brutal cupidity is stimulated by bribes of blood money—twenty dollars for every murdered American! and transforms them into letters of marque which the ships of all nations are bound to recognize, respect and obey.

Had she treated them as insurgents they would have had no other rights on the sea than had Bill Johnson, the pirate of the St. Lawrence. Having proclaimed them belligerents she has given them a commission not simply to capture American property in American vessels, but to capture on the high seas American property on board of whatever vessel it may be found, and to carry the neutral vessel and cargo into a belligerent port for further examination. She recognizes the right of the men who have robbed our treasury, betrayed our forts and filched our navy yards and arsenals to establish prize courts to decide upon the lawfulness of captures made by their commissioned cruisers, and brought into court for adjudication, and the title to be given by Davis's courts is to be held valid by the law of nations.

This is what the proclamation of neutrality really means. This is the neutrality which England has inaugurated and which France has adopted; and those two great powers who recently declared in the Congress at Paris that privateering is and shall remain abolished,—by royal and imperial proclamation have countersigned letters of marque for the destruction of American ships, and which threaten with spoliation the commerce of the world. The aim and effect of the British proclamation seems to us so clearly unfriendly and injurious, that it is hardly worth while to note the discourtesy of adopting such a policy, and giving it a definite and irreversible shape in advance of the arrival of Mr. Adams, without allowing us the opportunity to offer a word of explanation or remonstrance. Mr. Adams reached Liverpool the 13th of May.—The next day the proclamation was printed in London.

The United States by their neutrality broke the back of the Canadian rebellion, dashed the hopes cherished by the rebels of effective American sympathy, in good faith assisted the British government in maintaining its authority, and restoring order, and thus materially diminished the cost of treasure and of life at which alone their subjection could have been accomplished.

The British government by their neutrality have made our task far more difficult, apart from the injury we may anticipate from the fleet of privateers whose letters are so respectably countersigned. But we learn from this proclamation one lesson, that will be perhaps worth all that it shall cost us: we learn the treatment we may expect, if we fail to maintain our national integrity and the honor of our flag.

If a mere supposition that the rebels of Montgomery are likely to be successful, can in a moment dash from the memory of the English government all recollection of past friendship, and induce her in our moment of trial to condescend to a course so different from that we hud pursued towards her: what treatment may we not expect from her, and from every other European cabinet, if we ourselves by our conduct admit that we are powerless at home. How will we be treated abroad, if we yield to the threats of a fraction of our own population? What will be our standing among nations if, consenting to separation, we lose nearly half of our territory, and two-thirds of our Atlantic seaboard, and descend to the position of a third rate power? Or what respect will be paid us, if to maintain our territory we compromise with rebellion? If we yield at the cannon's mouth, what the people have deliberately refused at the polls, if we teach the world by such an example that we may be bullied with success, and that when we resist on principle unreasonable demands, it is only necessary to humble our flag, and to threaten Washington, to induce us ignominously to submit?

Let us discard all reliance upon other help than that of God, a right cause and a strong arm, and let us recognize the stubborn fact that "the government or nation that fails to protect itself against foes, whether foreign or domestic, deserves to crush ingloriously."

THE RIGHT SYMPATHIES OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE.

Before leaving the question of England's neutrality, I think we should distinguish between the hasty action of the British cabinet and the deliberate conviction of the British people.

That the heart of that great nation is sound, and that as soon as they understand the motives and manner of this rebellion as you understand them, they will appreciate our position, approve our resolution and wish us God speed in our great work of restoring the federal union to its integrity and its great original principles of freedom, I cannot, I will not doubt.

Already their cabinet has partially atoned for the first proclamation by an order that will prevent the privateers of Davis from entering British ports, and both the government and the people must soon recognize the fact that we have the ability and the will, to crush this rebellion and maintain our integrity, however long the struggle, however great the cost: and that we no more recognize the right of England nor of Europe to dictate to us in this matter, than England would have recognized our right to interfere between her and Nana Sahib. The material interests based on cotton must yield to the national and moral duties that to-day devolve upon the American people, in determining, perhaps for untold ages, the destiny of the American continent.

The English people will see that our resolve to crush the conspiracy for the establishment of a slave empire, is not based on any evanescent burst of enthusiasm, but on the most sober calculations of honor, duty, safety and economy: and that it is the true interest of England, her pecuniary her political and her moral interest that the war should be as brief as possible, that the rebels may no longer be deluded into the belief that any true Englishman who understands the history and the object of their rebellion can regard it with other feelings, than those naturally aroused by a policy of fraud treachery and oppression.

That the restoration of the integrity of our union is to be accomplished without a vast expenditure of treasure, and perhaps of blood, no one anticipates. We all know something of the cost of European wars, but we know also our own resources and the immense stake for which we will be fighting. Our fathers fought for seven years for our national freedom, and the spirit abroad throughout our land indicates that their sons if necessary, will fight seven years more to save it from destruction and disgrace. Whether the debt incurred for its preservation shall be hundreds or thousands of millions it will be a sacred legacy to future generations. A debt of five hundred millions, as remarked by an English journalist, would leave this nation less severely taxed than any nation of Europe.

OUR COUNTRY ONE.

If any man supposes that this republic can be advantageously sundered into two, let him cast his eye upon the map and endeavour to find a natural line to separate the two confederacies. The geographical formation of our country indicates that it is one: nature has provided no boundary line between the North and the South: no river like the Mississippi, no mountain chain like the Alleghanies, or the Rocky mountains, running from the West to the Atlantic, and forming an Alpine boundary to divide the sections. On the contrary, the father of waters stretches out his great arms to the East and to the West bearing on his bosom to the gulf, the generous products of the valleys which they fertilize, and carrying back in their place the cotton, rice and sugar of our Southern borders, and imports from foreign climes. The Mississippi, source and channel of prosperity to North and South alike in every mile of its progress: on the West to Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana; on the East to Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, proclaims to the citizens of the immense region which it waters through thousands of miles, in extent, from North to South, and East to West, that our country is one and indivisible.

Our duty to the South forbids our acquiescence in this rebellion, for it would reverse the American policy for the last half century, and reconsign to foreign invasion, to anarchy and ruin, the immense territories which we have rescued from European sway, and united as parts of our great nation.

Look back to the olden time and see what the Southern country would again become. Trace the history of Florida from the days of Charles V., from the adventures of De Leon and De Soto, the persecution of protestants from France, and the retaliation on the murderous Spaniards ; the capture of St. Augustine by Sir Francis Drake, the buccaneering inroads of the English, the transfer of Florida to the British crown; its partial settlement from Italy and Greece, the privateering exploits in our revolution, the capture of Baton Rouge and Pensacola, until its pur- chase by our government in 1819.

Remember that the Spaniards navigated the Gulf of Mexico for two centuries, without discovering that it was the outlet of the great river of the North, a fact which perhaps induces the Southern confederates to imagine that we also may be persuaded to forget its existence. Look at Louisiana from the days of Law and the Mississippi bubble to its cession to Spain in 1762, and its retrocession to France in 1800, when we hastened to buy it from the first consul, and you will find nothing in Florida, in Louisiana, nor indeed in Texas, to indicate even the first beginning of the prosperity which has been so rapidly developed under the fostering protection of the federal government.

[To be concluded next week]

The Great Conspiracy and England's Neutrality (Part Two) January, 1862

THE GREAT CONSPIRACY, and England's Neutrality. (Part Two of Four)

An Address delivered at Mount Kisco, New York, on the Fourth of July, 1861, the Eighty-Sixth Anniversary of American Independence. 

Source: Pacific Commercial Advertiser. Honolulu: January 16, 1862.

By John Jay, Esq. 

THE CORNERSTONE OF THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY

We have glanced at the secret history of the conspiracy. Now, let me ask, on what ground does this usurping Confederacy ask to be recognized as independent and admitted to the family of nations?

In the convention of South Carolina, in reply to an objection that the declaration reported by the committee dwelt too much on the Fugitive Slave Law and personal liberty bills, as giving it the appearance of special pleading, Mr. Memminger said: "Allow me to say to the honorable gentleman, that when you take position that you have a right to break your faith, to destroy an agreement that yon have made, to tear off your seal from the document to which it is affixed, you are bound to justify yourself fully to all the nations of the world, for there is nothing that that casts such a stain upon the escutcheon of a nation as a breach of faith."

In this Mr. Memminger was clearly right, and the alleged breach of faith by the North, touching the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law was resorted to as affording a plausible pretext for seceding from the Union. But the debates show that this pretext was a sham, and Mr. Rhett frankly declared that he regarded the Fugitive Slave Law as unconstitutional, and that Mr. Webster and Mr. Keitt had expressed the same opinion.

You have seen, too, from Mr. Stephens, that all the constitutional rights of the South were protected within the Union—and that the South was indebted to the Union for her safety, prosperity and happiness.

What then is the real ground on which the breach of faith committed by the seceding states is to be justified, if it can be, justified at all; on what ground is it recommended to the prejudices of the South and to the impartial judgment of the world?'

After secession was an accomplished fact, so far as their conventions could manage it by usurped authority and fictitious majorities, and Mr. Stephens had become not only a member but a prominent leader of the conspiracy, he said at Atlanta:-

"The foundations of our new government are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race is his natural and moral condition. This our new government is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth."

Mr. Stephens enlarged upon this distinguishing characteristic of the government, to establish which the union was to be dissolved, sneered at the principle that all men are equal, enunciated by our fathers in the declaration of independence "as the pestilent heresy of fancy politicians"—declared that "African inequality and the equality of white men were the chief cornerstone of the southern republic!" and claimed that with a government so founded "the world would recognize in theirs the the model nation of history."

Here we have their only apology for this rebellion, stripped of all shams and disguises, and thus at length in the latter half of the nineteenth century, stand face to face in deadly conflict the antagonist systems of the new world.

"All men," said the founders of the American republic, "are created free and equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." "Let it ever be remembered," said the Continental Congress, " that the rights for which we have contended were the rights of human nature," and on that foundation arose the fair fabric of our liberties.

The dark shadow arises of another confederacy which Davis and Keitt and Floyd and Toombs are striving to establish on the ruins of the republic erected by Washington and Franklin and Hamilton and Jefferson, and the one great plea with which this new power seeks to recommend itself to the Christian world, is the assumption that the white man was born to be the master and the black man was created to be his slave.

THE REBELS OF '76 AND THOSE OF '61.

The attempt of the slavery insurrectionists to bring into contempt the great principle of the Declaration of Independence and their characterizing the men who uttered it and the men who believe in it as "fancy politicians," shows how absolutely antagonist in their principles were those who rebelled in '76 against unconstitutional acts of parliament, and those who in '61 are rebelling against the constitution of the United States. Even in the august year which we are met to celebrate, the principles and reasonings of our fathers commanded the admiration of Europe, and called forth in the House of Lords that magnificent eulogy of Chatham, when he said that for himself he must declare that he had studied and admired the free states of antiquity, the master states of the world: but that for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity and wisdom of conclusion, no body of men could stand in preference to the congress of Philadelphia.

Whatever may be the future of America the past is safe.

The Confederates of the slave republic, unrivaled as may be their skill in robbing us of material wealth and power, cannot rob the Founders of our Union of their glory—cannot filch from us the treasures we possess in their great principles, cannot lessen by the tithe of a hair, the truth of and force of their example.

On the contrary, the formation of the Southern Confederacy adds new proof to their farsighted and prophetic sagacity. Look at the rebel states, plunged into anarchy and war by Jefferson Davis, with a fettered press, free speech silenced, forced loans, and an army enlarged by conscription, and then listen to a single passage from William Pinckney, the great orator of Maryland, which occurs in a speech made in the Maryland House of Delegates, in 1789: and remember as you listen to it the proof I have already given you that the so-called Southern Confederacy is a military despotism, extemporized and precipitated on the people of the South, who have never been allowed to express their will in regard to the substitution of the Montgomery Constitution, for the ancient constitution and government which the Confederates are striving to destroy.

Said Mr. Pinckney:-

"That the dangerous consequences of the system of bondage have not as yet been felt does not prove that they never will be. * * To me, sir, nothing for which I have not the evidence of my senses is more clear than that it will one day destroy that reverence for liberty which is the vital principle of a republic. "While a majority of your citizens are accustomed to rule with the authority of despots within particular limits, while your youth are reared in the habit of thinking that the great rights of human nature are not so sacred but they may with innocence be trampled on, can it be expected that the public mind should glow with that generous ardor in the cause of freedom which can alone save a government like ours from the lurking demon of 'usurpation? Do you not dread contamination of principle? Have you no alarms for the continuance of that spirit, which once conducted us to victory and independence when the talons of power were unclasped for our destruction 1 Have you no apprehension that when the votaries of freedom sacrifice also at the gloomy altars of slavery, they will at length become apostates from the former? For my own part,I have no hope that the stream of general liberty will flow forever unpolluted through the foul mire of partial bondage, or that they who have been habituated to lord it over others, will not in time be base enough to let others lord it over them. If they resist it will be the struggle of pride and selfishness, not of principle."

The hour so philosophically predicted seventy-two years ago has come. The usurping hand is lifted against the most benignant government the world has ever seen. The usurpation is unresisted, the country is precipitated into war and popular government overthrown, and a military rule established, the people, it would seem, have cast to the world the historic memories we this day meet to celebrate. Mr. Russell, the correspondent of the London Times, now traveling at the South, treated with every attention, charmed with their courtesy, and evidently inclined to regard their rebel movement with a favorable eye, writes from South Carolina on the 30th April, and makes this sad disclosure: "From all quarters have come to my ears the echoes of the same voice ; it may be feigned, but there is no discord in the note, and it sounds in wonderful strength and monotony all over the country. Shades of George III., of North, of Johnson, of all who contended against the great rebellion which tore these colonies from England, can you hear the chorus which rings through the state of Marion, Sumpter and Pinckney and not clash your ghostly hands in triumph? that voice says ' If we could only get one of the royal race of England to rule over us we should be content.'"

HOW THE REBELS ACQUIRED THEIR STRENGTH

Let me say next a word of the means by which a conspiracy so contemptible in its origin, so destitute of moral weight and of popular support has attained to its present dimensions, ousting the federal government of its jurisdiction in more than half of our national territory to the east of the Rocky Mountains, and obtaining possession of arsenals and navy yards and fortresses, seventeen in number, which had cost the American people more than seven millions of dollars.

On the 29th October, 1860, before the presidential election, Lieut. General Scott wrote a letter to President Buchanan in which he referred to the secession excitement which the leaders of the conspiracy, were actively fanning at the South, and remarked, that if this glorious Union were broken by whatever line political madness might contrive, there would be no hope of reuniting the fragments, except by the laceration and despotism of the sword; pointing out the danger, he proceeded to point out the prevention:-

"From a knowledge of our southern population," he said, "it is my solemn conviction that there is some danger of an early act of rashness preliminary to secession, viz.: the seizure of some or all of the following posts: Forts Jackson and Philip in the Mississippi, below New Orleans, both without garrisons; Fort Morgan, below Mobile, without a garrison, Forts Pickens and McRae, Pensacola harbor, with an insufficient garrison for one; Fort Pulaski below Savannah, without a garrison; Forts Moultrie and Sumpter, Charleston harbor, the former with an insufficient garrison, and the latter without any, and Fort Monroe, Hampton Roads, without a sufficient garrison. In my opinion all these works should immediately be so garrisoned as to make any attempt to take any one of them, by surprise or coup de main, ridiculous. ""With an army, faithful to its allegiance and the navy probably equally so, and with a federal executive for the next twelve months of firmness and moderation, which the country has a right to expect—moderation being an element of power, not less than firmness—there is good reason to hope that the danger of secession may be made to pass away without one conflict of arms, one execution or one arrest for treason."

Gentlemen, Lieut. General Scott knew well, we all know, that what he recommended Mr. Buchanan to do an honest executive might have done. Again and again in the history of our country have attempts been made to resist the execution of the laws, and again and again has the federal government triumphantly vindicated its supremacy.

The first armed rebellion was that headed by Shay in Massachusetts in the Winter of 1787. The rebels attempted to seize the arsenal, and were met with cannon that killed three and wounded another of their number, and the state militia, under the command of Gen. Lincoln routed their forces, taking many prisoners, and peace was restored not by any compromise but by the enforcement of the laws.

As a Lincoln suppressed the first rebellion, so will a Lincoln suppress the last.

You will readily call to mind other similar occasions, where the federal government by prompt action maintained its supremacy unimpaired.

First came the whiskey rebellion in Pennsylvania during the administration of Washington, to suppress which the president called out fifteen thousand men from three different states led by their governors and general Morgan, whom Washington at first proposed himself to accompany across the Alleghanies.

Next president Jefferson crushed in the bud the opening conspiracy of Aaron Burr.

President Madison during the war of 1816, when doubts were entertained of the loyalty of the Hartford conventionists, who were falsely reported to be in correspondence with the enemy, stationed major Jessup, of Kentucky, at Hartford with a regiment to suppress any sudden outbreak. Gen. Jackson, about the same time in New Orleans, proclaimed martial law in consequence of attempts by the civil authorities to embarrass the necessary measures of defense.

President Jackson, in 1832, repressed by the arm of General Scott, and amid the hearty applause of the nation, the defiant nullification of South Carolina, and President Tyler, in 1843, with the approval of his secretary, Mr. John C. Calhoun, sent United States troops to Rhode Island to suppress the state revolution organized by a majority of the people of the state, but in violation of the existing state constitution, under the leadership of Governor Thomas W. Dorr.

When, in 1860, General Scott, in advance of any outbreak, recommended President Buchanan to reinforce the forts instead of recommending active measures of interference, such as his predecessors whom I have named did not hesitate to take, he simply asked of the president to do what any intelligent school boy could see was absolutely proper and essential—and what he could accomplish by a single word.—Mr. Buchanan guided by his secretary of war, the traitor and thief John B. Floyd, refused to order the reinforcement of the fortresses; all the forts named by General Scott, excepting Fort Pickens, were seized by the Confederates; and on the fact of their quiet possession, and the aid and comfort thus given to the rebels by the federal cabinet, was based the secession of the traitorous states and the formation of the new Confederacy.

The fact thus becomes clear as day, that not simply all the strength the rebel Confederacy originally possessed but its very organization and existence, were due not to the people of the South on whom without their sanction it was precipitated, nor to the leaders, skillful as they may have been, who had neither arms nor armies to overpower the government, but they were due to the federal executive and his advisers of the cabinet. This fact is so interesting as a matter of history, it is so important to a right understanding of the whole subject, and bears so clearly upon the question, what is our duty as citizens and what the policy of our government, as regards the tolerance or suppression of this rebellion, that you will allow me to quote one authority upon the point from among the rebels themselves.

The Baltimore Examiner in an elaborate eulogy of Floyd, who in the extent and infamy of his treachery certainly excelled his fellow traitors in the cabinet, makes this plain avowal: "All who have attended to the developments of the last three months and knew aught of the movements of the Buchanan administration up to the time of Floyd's resignation, will justify the assertion that the Southern Confederacy would not and could not be in existence at this hour, but for the action of the late Secretary of War.

"The plan invented by General Scott to stop secession was like all campaigns devised by him, very able in its details and nearly certain of general success. The Southern states are full of arsenals and forts commanding their rivers and strategic points: General Scott desired to transfer the army of the United States to these forts as speedily and as quietly as possible. The Southern states could not cut off communication between the government and the fortresses without a great fleet, which they can not build for years; or take them by land without one hundred thousand men, many hundred millions of dollars, several campaigns, and many a bloody siege. Had Scott been able to have got these forts in the condition he desired them to be, the Southern Confederacy would not now exist."

THE TRAITORS WHO HAVE BETRAYED US

Such is the truth fairly stated by the Baltimore Examiner, in the interest of the rebels. The union has been severed, not by violence from, without, but by treachery within. It has been convulsed from its centre to its circumference, not from any internal weakness in our federal system, but by the infernal villainy of our federal rulers.

Traitors have betrayed the union, traitors have betrayed our forts; and the betrayal no more proves moral weakness in the one case than it does material weakness in the other. There is no fortification so impregnable but that a traitorous governor may yield it without a blow—neither is there any government on God's earth, that secret treachery may not enfeeble or temporarily overthrow.

"If," said Webster, "those appointed to defend the castle shall betray it, woe betide those within. Let us hope," he added, and how vain the hope as regards ourselves, "that we shall never see the time when the government shall be found in opposition to the constitution, and when the guardians of the Union shall become its betrayers."

I do not mean to say, gentlemen, that President Buchanan, who, at the close of his administration partially redeemed its character, by calling to his counsels those brave men and true patriots, Mr. Holt and General Dix, was personally privy to the designs of the false secretaries whom they replaced : but it is nevertheless true that he is the man who, under the Constitution is directly responsible to the American people for the acts of his administration.

In his position timidity was treason and inaction was crime. He alone could execute the laws, he had the power to execute them, and he did not execute them; and for the simple want of their non-execution the country drifted rapidly towards destruction. This was a case which the founders of our republic had not anticipated. As Mr. Sherman, of Ohio, aptly said, "the Constitution provided against every probable vacancy in the Office of President, but did not provide for utter imbecility."

I am aware that Mr. Buchanan's friends attribute his conduct in the whole matter to an amiable credulity and a humane desire to avoid the shedding of a drop of blood. I am sure that none of us would wish to deprive him of whatever benefit he may derive from the plea of virtuous motives, but allowing them all the force they are entitled to, we must still exclaim:-

"Curse on his virtues, they've undone his country!"

For no other of the confederates in this great villainy will the candid historian venture with success, the apology of mental imbecility or moral cowardice. They are men who make the boast that for long years it has been the aim of their existence to overthrow, not by open and honorable opposition, but secretly, traitorously and by subornation of treason, the most benignant government in the world, and one to which they were bound by solemn oaths and by sacred honor. They are men who, pretending to be gentlemen, have made conspiracy a trade and perjury a habit. They have blended professions of patriotism with the practice of treason, linked the duties of a senator with the position of a spy, and made a seat in the cabinet the office of a thief. With a refinement of meanness that could belong to no chivalry but that of slaveholding, and would be practiced by no knights save those of " the golden circle," they have to the last moment drawn their official salaries from the nation they were betraying; they have perfected their schemes of plunder in the very capital which they were seeking to cripple, and beneath the folds of the flag that they were swearing to support and plotting to humble. They are men in brief—for the subject is a revolting one—who, imitating Judas and rivalling Arnold, have made their daily life simply and purely a daily lie.

PROGRESS OF THE PLOT AND RISING OF THE PEOPLE

Did time permit me, I would like briefly to refer to the national events that, following in quick succession, have interrupted what Mr. Seward happily calls "the majestic march of our national progress;" the successive seizure of Southern forts in obedience to telegrams from the senate chamber, the spread of Southern treason like the wild fire of the prairies, the consternation of the people, the apathy of the executive, the plot to seize the capitol, intended to be executed in January and repeatedly postponed till the attempt involved too serious danger, the systematic efforts in the departments of the Treasury, of the Interior of War, and I fear also, of the Navy, to cripple the United States, to strengthen the rebels, and to close the term of the administration by a coup d'etat, that should give to the new Confederacy the power and the prestige of the old government, and the preparations made by northern confederates whom the rebels had been taught to believe represented the great northern democracy, for assisting the plot and joining at the right moment in a general revolution.

Lost themselves to a sense of honor, they ceased to believe in its existence at the North. They seem to have been unable to distinguish between a defense of the Constitutional rights of slaveholders within the union and under the constitution, and a war in behalf of slavery for the severance of the Union, the overthrow of the Constitution, the desecration of our flag, and the humiliation of our country. Then came the interruption of their plans by the premature discovery of the theft of the Indian bonds and other villanies, compelling the retirement of the traitorous secretaries Cobb, Thompson and Floyd: the advent of Holt and Dix reviving the hopes of the nation, and the immortal order of the latter, which rung like a trumpet through the land, "If any man shall attempt to pull down the national flag shoot him on the spot."

Then came the official announcement to the country, by the counting of the electoral votes, of the people's choice, next the safe arrival of Mr. Lincoln in Washington, unharmed by the assassins who had sworn to take his life ; then the inauguration, simple and imposing, the oath administered by the chief justice of the United States, and the quiet transfer of such remnants of the federal property as had not been stolen from the people under the retiring administration.

A month of apparent inaction on the part of the new administration, engaged in disentangling the web of treachery, and learning how much of treason lingered in the departments—a month of active preparation by the rebel confederates, and we began to hear the bitter taunts of England at the spiritless people of the great North who were being driven to dissolution and infamy without an effort at resistance, and relinquishing their nationality to a rebellion without striking a blow in its defense.

We had a brief foretaste of the ignominy that awaits a nation which basely surrenders its integrity and its independence, and we heard the prelude of the shout that would greet the downfall of the Union, and the epitaph that should record:-

* * "But yesterday it might
Have stood against the world ; now lies it there,
And none so poor to do it reverence."

Assured of the integrity and patriotism of the President and the wisdom of his cabinet, the North waited as only a brave people, conscious of their strength and of the justice of their cause could afford to wait. The strength of the government was gradually developed, the war and navy departments began to exhibit signs of life—and the great statesman of the West, who sacrificing political ambition and personal preferences, had consented to preside over a depleted Treasury, renewed the miracle attributed by Webster to Alexander Hamilton: "He smote the rock of tho national resources, and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead body of the public credit, and it sprang upon its feet."

Desperate as our situation seemed, capitalists demanded no other security than the name of Chase, and when he asked for a loan of eight millions, more than thirty millions were instantly offered.

Gentlemen, I have not time to dwell on the attack on Sumpter, the attack of ten thousand men on one hundred men, and tho ill-judged boast of Governor Pickens that they had humbled the Star-Spangled Banner for the first time in seventy years. They themselves by that act and that boast initiated an irresistible conflict that will hardly cease till the Stars and Stripes again float in their beauty from every fortress in our land.

That bombardment, as was remarked by one of the Judges of the Supreme Court, "blew all the plots of the traitors into the air, and inaugurated a change in the sentiment of the country that seemed all but miraculous." It awoke the deep love of country which had slumbered beneath the platforms of party and commercial interest. It ended at once the absurd cry of "no coercion," as applicable to a government in enforcing its laws, and protecting its existence. The rebels by that act closed the door of compromise and reconciliation which had thus far been kept open. They rejected the appeal to a convention of the American people, to which the president in his inaugural had assented—they selected instead the arbitrament of force, the great trial by battle. They struck at the very heart of the nation when they sought to humble the flag of our union that had protected them from infancy, and which from childhood we have loved. They themselves inaugurated war. They imposed upon us the most sacred duty that can devolve it; on a people of protecting their nationality, and the world that had wondered at a forbearance which they could not understand, now wondered again at the spontaneous uprising of a mighty nation.

The threatened attack on Washington, the disloyalty of Baltimore, the cutting off of all communication by railroad and telegraph between the national capital and the great North, completed the work begun at Sumpter.

Party lines grew faint and vanished as completely as though they had never existed. Washington has been described as leaning in the darkest hour of the revolution, with one arm resting on Massachusetts, and the other on North Carolina. The faithlessness of tho latter to her historic memories, prevents the parallel being now complete, but we may say of Lincoln what can be said of no other president since Washington, that in this dark hour he rests with one great arm upon his political friends, and the other on his political opponents, and that, as he looks abroad over the country whose destinies are in his keeping, he sees neither republicans, nor democrats—neither nativists, nor aliens, he sees but two classes, loyal citizens on the one side, and traitors on the other.

The feeling exhibited throughout the loyal states is not as some Europeans have supposed, an ebulition of enthusiasm, based upon sudden and evanescent passion, but tho expression of a profound conviction gradually forced upon them by a long train of facts that culminated at Sumpter, that both duty and honor imperatively demand that they shall crush this gigantic conspiracy against the integrity of the country.

THE ARMY OF THE UNION.

It was this that, within six weeks, called forth, as if by magic, an army of 200,000, converting our cities into camps and making the repression of this rebellion the one great business of the American people.

The scene has been one which, day by day, has thrilled us with emotion, one upon which the Bancroft and the Motley of the next century will linger with admiration.

Massachusetts first in the field, as in the olden days of trial, shedding the first blood at Baltimore, first to occupy and protect the capital, where her great senator was stricken down, against the traitors, whose hatred to him foreshadowed their hatred towards the American Constitution, of which he had been the faithful and eloquent expounder.

New York, "herself the noblest eulogium on the Union," following close behind with her gallant Seventh, reaching Washington by a march already famous, and insuring by their presence the safety of Washington. The New England states, Pennsylvania and the great west, pouring in their quotas with generous rivalry, and our foreign population rising instantly to the grandeur of the occasion, and hastening to the defense of their adopted country, present features of strength in the American Republic of which the most ardent of its eulogists had hardly dreamed.

If any man has regarded our large foreign element as one that threatened danger to the perpetuity of popular institutions, let him glance at the regiments now gathering to battle in their behalf. He will find among them men who have fought for freedom in other lands, and who have pined for their love of it in continental dungeons. He will find scholars from far-famed universities, and graduates of the military schools of Europe who have emerged from positions in which they were gaining an independency to proffer to their country their dear bought experience, and guide and instruct the military ardour that sweeps like a whirlwind over the land. Call the roll of nationalities and you will have responses from England and Ireland, Scotland and Wales, from natives of Catholic France and Protestant Germany—you will have replies from Poles who yet dream of an independent Poland, from Hungarians in whose ears still linger the eloquence of Kossuth, from Italians rejoicing in a regenerated Italy, and who are fresh from executing the policy of the lamented Cavour and from fighting by the side of Garibaldi. Every people of Christendom has its representatives in the army of the Union that has gone forth to fight for national unity, national independence and the rights of human nature, against the confederated forces of slavery and treason.

[To be Continued]