the chains of Bondage
on the limbs of Immortal beings. May the God of Justice thwart their
designs and paralyze their wicked efforts!"

CHAPTER XXV.

"THE FIRE IN THE REAR."

The treacherous purposes of professedly-loyal Copperheads being seen
through, and promptly and emphatically denounced to the Country by Union
statesmen, the Copperheads aforesaid concluded that the profuse
circulation of their own Treason-breeding speeches--through the medium
of the treasonable organizations before referred to, permeating the
Northern States,--would more than counteract all that Union men could
say or do. Besides, the fiat had gone forth, from their Rebel masters
at Richmond, to Agitate the North.

Hence, day after day, Democrat after Democrat, in the one House or the
other, continued to air his disloyal opinions, and to utter more or less
virulent denunciations of the Government which guarded and protected
him.

Thus, Brooks, of New York, on the 25th of January (1864), sneeringly
exclaimed: "Why, what absurdity it is to talk at this Capitol of
prosecuting the War by the liberation of Slaves, when from the dome of
this building there can be heard at this hour the booming of cannon in
the distance!"

Thus, also, on the day following, Fernando Wood--the same man who,
while Mayor of New York at the outbreak of the Rebellion, had, under
Rebel-guidance, proposed the Secession from the Union, and the
Independence, of that great Metropolis,--declared to the House that: "No
Government has pursued a foe with such unrelenting, vindictive malignity
as we are now pursuing those who came into the Union with us, whose
blood has been freely shed on every battle-field of the Country until
now, with our own; who fought by our side in the American Revolution,
and in the War of 1812 with Great Britain; who bore our banners bravest
and highest in our victorious march from Vera Cruz to the City of
Mexico, and who but yesterday sat in these Halls contributing toward the
maintenance of our glorious institutions."

Then he went on, in the spirit of prophecy, to declare that: "No purely
agricultural people, fighting for the protection of their own Domestic
Institutions upon their own soil, have ever yet been conquered. I say
further, that no revolted people have ever been subdued after they have
been able to maintain an Independent government for three years." And
then, warming up to