The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5,
November 1862, by Various

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Title: The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862
Devoted to Literature and National Policy

Author: Various

Release Date: March 25, 2007 [EBook #20899]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE

CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:

DEVOTED TO

LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY.

VOL. II.--NOVEMBER, 1862.--NO. V.

THE CAUSES OF THE REBELLION.

No other nation was ever convulsed by an internal struggle so tremendous
as that which now rends our own unhappy country. No mere rebellion has
ever before spread its calamitous effects so widely, beyond the scene of
its immediate horrors. Just in proportion to the magnitude of the evils
it has produced, is the enormity of the crime involved, on one side or
the other; and good men may well feel solicitous to know where rests the
burden of this awful responsibility.

The long train of preparatory events preceding the outbreak, and the
extraordinary acts by which the conspirators signalized its
commencement, point, with sufficient certainty, to the incendiaries who
produced the vast conflagration, and who appear to be responsible for
the ruin which has ensued. But it remains to inquire by what means the
great mass of inflammable materials was accumulated and made ready to
take fire at the touch; what justification there may be for the authors
of the fatal act, or what palliation of the guilt which seems to rest
upon them. The reputation of the American people, and of the free
government which is their pride and glory, must suffer in the estimation
of mankind, unless they can be fairly acquitted of all responsibility
for the civil war, which not only desolates large portions of our own
country, but seriously interferes with the prosperity of multitudinous
classes, and the stabili