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driver to every forty Yankees, would ensure good order and lively work among them.

Those unacquainted with the state of public opinion at the South, can form but a faint conception of the arrogant assumptions of these slaveholders. On their remote plantations, surrounded only by their colored menials, not one of whom could testify in any court of justice, they ruled with a despotic power which felt no restraint. They could torture, maim, kill at pleasure. Thus they have formed a character of arrogance and of ferocity, which must excite the amazement and the execration of the civilized world. The evidence upon this point can not be resisted by any honest mind.

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OF THE

REBELLION,

ENGRAVED EXPRESSLY FOR ABBOTT'S CIVIL WAR.

CHAPTER III.

THE WAR COMMENCED.

ENERGY OF THE CONSPIRATORS.-VIEWS OF SECESSIONISTS AND UNIONISTS.-TESTIMONY OF WEBSTER AND CLAY.-IGNOMINIOUS CONDUCT OF THE TRAITORS. INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.-ANECDOTE.-FALL OF SUMTER.-UPRISING OF THE NORTH.-DEVELOPMENTS OF TREASON.-RESPONSE TO THE CALL FOR 75,000 VOLUNTEERS.-NOBLE SPEECH OF SENATOR DOUGLAS.-UNION OF ALL PARTIES.TREACHERY OF REBELS IN VIRGINIA.-DESTRUCTION OF GOSPORT NAVY YARD.

ON the 22d of February, four days after the inauguration of Jefferson Davis, in Montgomery, the Collector of Customs, appointed by the rebel government in Charleston, S. C., issued the manifesto, that all vessels, from any State out of the Confederacy, would be treated as foreign vessels, and subject to the port dues and other charges established by the laws of the Confederate States. Thus, by a stroke of the pen, the immense commerce of the Northern States was declared to be foreign commerce, beneath the guns of the forts which the United States had reared, at an expense of millions of dollars.

As these outrages were progressing, the people of the Free States were waiting quietly, but with intense latent emotion, for the inauguration of President Lincoln. Nothing could be hoped for while Mr. Buchanan remained in the presidential chair; and he was probably more impatient than any other man in the United States, for the hour to arrive which would release him from the burdens of an office, which were infinitely too heavy for him to bear. He was apparently the unwilling servant of the Secessionists, and could not escape from the toils, in which he had become involved. But the Secessionists had no idea of allowing President Lincoln to be inaugurated. Though frustrated in their plan of securing his assassination, on his passage to the Capital, they were quite confident of their ability to seize Washington, and make it the metropolis of their Confederacy. One of the leading New York journals, under date of January 1, said:

"It is now well known, that military companies have been organized and drilled, for months past, in Maryland and Virginia, some of them under the eye of an officer of the regular army, and that the distinct object of their organization is, to aid in the seizure of Washington City, or the prevention, by force, of Lincoln's inauguration. Some of the less prudent of their leaders boast, in private circles, that they have five thousand well armed and organized men, ready to strike the blow instantly, upon the concerted signal being given.

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Very energetic secret societies were organized, all through the Southern States, under the names of "Minute Men," " Vigilance Committees," and "Knights of the Golden Circle," pledged to sustain the Southern Confederacy, to extend the institution of slavery, and to watch over, and, if necessary, to exterminate all suspected of disaffection. Great numbers of men, who ventured to speak freely, were treated with every indignity, and hung. The Hon. Mr. Iverson, of Georgia, stated boastfully in the Senate of the United States, "A Senator from Texas has told me that a great many of those free debaters were hanging from the trees of that country. Future generations will find it hard to believe that in a civilized community such atrocities could be committed as were enacted by the advocates of slavery at the South.

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Very great ability was displayed by the leaders of this conspiracy. They were men of thought, of wealth, and were long accustomed to the exercise. of power. They were few in numbers, and could thus act with almost the energy of a single despotic mind. Robert Toombs, of Georgia, by his talent in debate, his self-confidence, and his imperious, inexorable will, held Cobb, Crawford, and Iverson, as the willing vassals of his baronial spirit, and thus molded as he pleased the State of Georgia. When Mr. Iverson, of Georgia, withdrew from the Senate, he uttered the following arrogant menace:

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Georgia is one of six States, which, in less than sixty days, have dissolved their connection with the Federal Union, and declared their separate independence. Steps are now in progress, to form a Confederacy of their own, and, in a few weeks at furthest, a provisional government will be formed, giving them ample powers for their own defense, with power to enter into negotiations with other nations, to make war, to conclude peace, to form treaties, and to do all other things which independent nations may of right do. Provision will be made for admission of other states to the new Union, and it is confidently believed that, within a few months, all the Southern States of the late Confederacy will be formed into a Union far more homogeneous, and, therefore, far more stable than the one now broken up.

"You may acquiesce in the revolution, and acknowledge the independence of a great Confederacy, or you may make war on the seceding States, and attempt to force them back. If you acknowledge our independence, and treat us as one of the nations of the earth, you can have friendly relations and intercourse with us; you can have an equitable division of the public property and of the existing public debt of the United States. But if you make war upon us, we will seize and hold all the public property in our borders, and in our reach, and we will never pay one dollar of the public debt, for the law of nations will extinguish all public and private obligations between the States.

"The first Federal gun that is fired upon the seceding States-the first drop of blood of any of their people, shed by the Federal troops-will cancel every public and private obligation of the South, which may be due either to the Federal government or to the northern people. We care not in what shape or form, or under what pretext you undertake coercion. We shall

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