Herculaneum. It desolates the fireside and covers the family dwelling with gloom, and an awful vacancy rests, where, like a haunted mansion, "No human figure stirred to go or come, No face looked forth from shut or open casement; No chimney smoked; there was no sign of home " It loads the people with debt, to pass down from one generation to another like the curse of original sin. Upon its merciless errand of vio.ence it fills the land with crime and tumult and rapine and it “ 'gluts the grave with untimely victims and peoples the world of perdition. In the struggle of its death throes, it heaves the moral elements with convulsions, and leaves few traces of utility behind it to mitigate its curse; and he who inaugurates it, like the ferocious Hun, should be denominated the scourge of God; and when his day of reckoning shall come, he will call upon the rocks and mountains to hide him from popular indignation. But with all its attending evils, this Union cannot be yielded to its demands nor to avoid its terrors; even though, like the republic of France, we may exchange for a time "liberty, equality, fraternity," for infantry, cavalry, and artillery. Nor are tame and timid measures the guarantees of peace. It is as much the nature of faction to be base as of patriotism to be noble; a divided Union, instead of securing peace, would present constant occasion for conflict and be a fruitful source of war. Let the rabble cry of divide and crucify go on from the throat of faction; and the cold and calculating political Pilates wash their hands and proclaim their innocence, while their souls are stained with guilt and crime for urging it forward; but let the faithful, conscious of their integrity and strong in truth, endure to the end. Ruthless as is the sway and devastating as is the course of war, it is not the greatest of evils nor the last lesson in humiliation. "'Sweet are the uses of adversity." In its currents of violence and blood it may purify an atmosphere too long surcharged with discontent and corruption and apostasy and treachery and littleness; and prove how poor a remedy it is for social grievances. It may correct the dry rot of demoralization in public station, and raise us as a people above the dead level of a mean and sordid ambition. It may scatter the tribe of bloated hangers-on, who seek to serve their country that they may plunder and betray it; and above all it may arouse the popular mind to a just sense of its responsibility, until it shall select its servants with care and hold them to a faithful discharge of their duties; until deficient morals shall be held questionable, falsehood a social fault, viola tions of truth a disqualification, and bribery a disgrace; until integrity shall be a recommendation, and treason and larceny crimes. Can a Union dissevered be reconstructed by the arrangement of all parties concerned in its formation? No! When it is once destroyed, it is destroyed forever. Let those who believe it can be, first raise the dead, place the dimpling laugh of childhood upon the lip of age, gather up the petals of May flowers and bind them upon their native stems in primeval freshness amidst the frosts of December, bring back the withered leaves of autumn and breathe into them their early luxuriance, and then gather again the scattered elements of a dissevered Union when the generous springtime of our republic has passed away, and selfishness and ambition have come upon us with their premature frosts and " winter of discontent." Shall we then surrender to turbulence and faction and rebellion, and give up the Union with all its elements of good, all its holy memories, all its hallowed associations, all its blood-bought history? "No! let the eagle change its plume, The leaf its hue, the flower its bloom," But do not give up the Union! Preserve it to "flourish in immortal youth," until it dissolves in the "wreck of matter and crash of worlds." Let the patriot and statesman stand by it to the last, whether assailed by foreign or domestic foes; and if he perishes in the conflict, let him fall like Rienzi, the last of the Tribunes, upon the same stand where he preached liberty and equality to his countrymen. Preserve it in the name of the Fathers of the Revolution, preserve it for its great elements of good, preserve it in the sacred name of liberty, preserve it for the faithful and devoted lovers of the Constitution in the rebellious states-those who are persecuted for its support, and are dying in its defence. Rebellion can lay down its arms to government -government cannot surrender to rebellion. Give up the Union, "this fair and fertile plain, to batten on that moor!" Divide the Atlantic, so that its tides shall beat in sections, that some spurious Neptune may rule an ocean of his own! Draw a line upon the sun's disc, that it may cast its beams upon earth in division! Let the moon, like Bottom in the play, show but half its face! Separate the constellation of the Pleiades and sunder the bands of Orion but retain the Union. Give up the Union, with its glorious flag, its Stars and Stripes, full of proud and pleasing and honorable recollections, for the spurious invention, with no antecedents but the history of a violated Constitution and of lawless ambition? No! let us stand by the emblem of our fathers: "Flag of the free heart's hope and home, By angels' hands to valor given, Thy stars have lit the welkin dome And all thy hues were born in heaven." Ask the Christian to exchange the cross, with the cherished memories of a Saviour's love, for the crescent of the impostor, or to address his prayers to the Juggernaut or Josh instead of to the living and true God! but sustain the emblem your fathers loved and cherished. Give up the Union? Never! The Union shall endure, and its praises shall be heard, when its friends and its foes, those who support and those who assail, those who bare their bosoms in its defence, and those who aim their daggers at its heart, shall all sleep in the dust together. Its name shall be heard with veneration amidst the roar of Pacific's waves, away upon the rivers of the north and east, where liberty is divided from monarchy, and be wafted in gentle breezes upon the Rio Grande. It shall rustle in the harvest, and wave in the standing corn, on the extended prairies of the West, and be heard in the bleating folds and lowing herds upon a thousand hills. It shall be with those who delve in mines, and shall hum in the manufactories of New England, and in the cotton-gins of the South. It shall be proclaimed by the Stars and Stripes in every sea of earth, as the American Union, one and indivisible, Upon the great thoroughfares, wherever steam drives and engines throb and shriek, its greatness and perpetuity shall be hailed with gladness. It shall be lisped in the earliest words, and ring in the merry voices of childhood, and swell to Heaven upon the song of maidens. It shall live in the stern resolve of manhood, and rise to the mercy-seat upon woman's gentle availing prayer. Holy men shall invoke its perpetuity at the altars of religion, and it shall be whispered in the last accents of expiring age. Thus shall survive and be perpetuated the American Union, and when it shall be proclaimed that time shall be no more, and the curtain shall fall, and the good shall be gathered to a more perfect union still, may the destiny of our dear land realize the poetic conception: "Perfumes as of Eden flowed sweetly along, And a voice as of angels, enchantingly sung, Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise, The queen of the world and the child of the skies." THE REBELLION: ITS ORIGIN AND MAINSPRING. CHARLES SUMNER. New York, November 27, 1861. On the sixth of November last, the people of the United States acting in pursuance of the Constitution and laws, chose Abraham Lincoln President. Of course this choice was in every particular perfectly constitutional and legal. As such, it was entitled to the respect and acquiescence of every good citizen. It is vain to say that the candidate represented opinions obnoxious to a considerable section of the coun try, or that he was chosen by votes confined to a special section. It s enough that he was duly chosen. You cannot set aside or deny such an election, without assailing not only the whole framework of the Constitution, but also the primal principle of American institutions. You become a traitor at once to the existing government and to the very idea of popular rule. You snatch a principle from the red book of despotism, and openly substitute the cartridge-box for the ballot-box. And yet scarcely had this intelligence flashed across the country before the mutterings of sedition and treason began to reach us from an opposite quarter. The Union was menaced; and here the first distinct voice came from South Carolina. A Senator from that state, one of the largest slaveholders of the country, and a most strenuous partisan of slavery (Mr. Hammond), openly declared, in language not easily forgotten, that before the 18th of December South Carolina would be "out of the Union, high and dry and forever." These words heralded the outbreak. With the pertinacity of demons its leaders pushed forward. Their avowed object was the dismemberment of the Republic, by detaching state after state, in order to found a slaveholding confederacy. And here the clearest utterance came from a late representative of Georgia (Mr. Stephens), now Vice-President of the Rebel States, who did not hesitate to proclaim that "the foundations of the new government are laid upon the great truth, that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is the negro's natural and moral condition," that "it is the first government in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth," -and that "the stone which was rejected by the first builders is in the new edifice become the chief stone of the corner." Here is a savage frankness, with insensibility to shame. The object avowed is hideous in every aspect, whether we regard it as treason to our paternal government, as treason to the idea of American institutions, or as treason to those commanding principles of economy, morals, and Christianity, without which civilization is no better than barbarism. And now we stand front to front in deadly conflict with this doubleheaded, triple-headed treason. Beginning with those states most peculiarly interested in slavery, and operating always with intensity proportioned to the prevalence of slavery, it fastens upon other states less interested,-Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia,-and with much difficulty is prevented from enveloping every state containing slaves, no matter how few; for such is the malignant poison of slavery that only a few slaves constitute a slave state with all the sympathies and animosities of slavery. This is the rebellion which I am to unmask. Bad as it is on its face, it becomes aggravated, when we consider its origin, and the agencies by which it is conducted. It is not merely a rebellion, but it is a rebellion begun in conspiracy; nor, in all history, ancient or modern, is there any record of conspiracy so vast and so wicked, ranging over such spaces both of time and territory, and forecasting such results. A conspiracy to seize a castle, o to assassinate a prince is petty by the side of this enormous, pro tracted treason, where half a continent is seized, studded with castles, fortresses, and public edifices, where the government itself is overthrown, and the President, on his way to the national capital, narrowly escapes most cruel assassination. But no conspiracy could ripen such pernicious fruit, if not rooted in a soil of congenial malignity. To appreciate properly this influence, we must go back to the beginning of the government. 66 South Carolina, which takes so forward a part in this treason, hesitated originally, as is well known, with regard to the Declaration of Independence. Once her vote was recorded against this act; and when it finally prevailed, her vote was given for it only formally and for the sake of seeming unanimity. But so little was she inspired by the Declaration, that, in the contest which ensued, her commissioners made a proposition to the British commander which is properly characterized by an able historian as equivalent to an offer from the state to return to its allegiance to the British crown." The hesitation with regard to the Declaration of Independence was renewed with regard to the National Constitution; and here it was shared by another state. Notoriously, both South Carolina and Georgia, which with the states carved from their original territory, Alabama and Mississippi, constitute the chief seat of the conspiracy, hesitated in becoming parties to the Union, and stipulated expressly for recognition of the slave trade in the National Constitution as an indispensable condition. In the Convention, Mr. Rutledge, of South Carolina, while opposing a tax on the importation of slaves, said: "The true question at present is, whether the Southern States shall or shall not be parties to the Union. Mr. Pinckney, also of South Carolina, followed with the unblushing declaration: "South Carolina can never receive the plan (of the Constitution), if it prohibits the slave trade." I quote now from Mr. Madison's authentic report of these important debates. With shame let it be confessed, that, instead of repelling this disgraceful overture, our fathers submitted to it, and in that submission you find the beginning of present sorrows. The slave trade, whose annual iniquity no tongue can tell, was placed for twenty years under the safeguard of the Constitution, thus giving sanction, support, and increase to slavery itself. The language is modest, but the intent was complete. South Carolina and Georgia were pacified, and took their places in the Union, to which they were openly bound only by a most hateful tie. Regrets for the past are not entirely useless, if out of them we get wisdom for the future, and learn to be brave. It is easy to see now, that, had the unnatural pretensions of these States beer originally encountered by stern resistance worthy of an honest people, the present conspiracy would been crushed before it saw the light. Its |