fabrics--merchants overhead in debt to the importers and jobbers of
the Northern sea-ports--every one owing more or less, and few able or
willing to pay: such was the general pecuniary condition of the South at
the outset of this subversion. It is no libel on the South to say that
relief from the pressure of over-due obligations was primarily sought by
an immense number, in plunging into the abyss of revolution. And a great
proportion of the Southern merchants, with full intent to defraud their
creditors, by lighting the flames of civil war, in 1860 swelled their
indebtedness to their Northern friends to the utmost. This was low
knavery seeking protection behind the black mantle of treason. If the
facts could be fully laid bare, it would be found that disinclination to
pay their honest debts has transformed vast numbers from Unionists into
traitors. The North can never respect those who seek to slay their
creditors, that they may evade their moral as well as legal obligation
to pay them.

Nor can the loyal millions respect those who, in setting forth the
grounds of their rebellion, and essaying to justify themselves in the
eyes of the civilized world, do not hesitate to deny the most palpable
truths. The rebel who rests on the inherent or reserved right of each
State to secede from the Union at her sovereign pleasure, is a bad
logician, and unsound in his constitutional theories; but he is not
necessarily a knave. But the rebel apologist who says to Europe, 'This
revolt was not impelled by Slavery, but by hostility to the policy of
Protection, Internal Improvements, etc., which the North had power in
the Union to fasten upon us in defiance of our utmost opposition,' he
shows himself a dissembler and a liar. There was no tariff when the
Cotton States seceded--there had been none for many years--which those
States had not heartily aided to enact. For not more than ten years of
the eighty-odd of our existence as a nation, has there been a tariff in
operation that South-Carolina did not help enact and sustain. The
tariffs which are now trumped up as an excuse for Secession, not only
had no existence when that Secession was inaugurated, but could have had
none had the Cotton States remained faithful to their constitutional
obligations. When, therefore, such men as Lieutenant Maury assure Europe
that Slavery did not incite the Southern Rebellion--that it had but a
remote and subordinate relation to that outbreak--they betray t