ld not have been
complied with, unless it had been meant to admit that there was no
binding force in existing institutions, the validity of which had not
once been called in question for seventy-two years. The real
Secessionists of the South, Rhett and Yancey and their followers,
availed themselves of the existing state of affairs, and precipitated
rebellion,--a step which they never would have taken, had they not been
assured that no resistance would be made to their action so long as Mr.
Buchanan should remain in the Presidency, and that he would be supported
by the leaders of the Northern Democracy, who would take their followers
with them along the road that led to the Union's dissolution. South
Carolina, rabid as she was, did not rebel until the last Democratic
President of the United States had publicly assured her that he would do
nothing to prevent her from reducing the Calhoun theory to practice; and
had she not rebelled, not another State would have left the Union. The
opportunity that she could not get under President Jackson she obtained
under President Buchanan,--and she did not hesitate to make the most of
that opportunity, all indeed that could be made of it, well knowing that
it could not be expected again to occur.

With these facts before them, the American people should be prepared for
further rebellious action on the part of that faction whose creed it is
that rebellion is right when directed against the ascendency of their
political opponents. They have done their utmost to assist the Rebels
all through the war, and the great riots in New York last year were the
legitimate consequences of their doctrine, if not of their labors. We
know that organizations hostile to the Union have been formed in the
West, and that there was to have been a rising there, had any striking
successes been achieved by the Confederate forces during the last six
months. Nothing but the vigor and the victories of Grant and Sherman and
Farragut saved the North from becoming the scene of civil war in 1864.
Nothing but the vigor and union of the people in their political
capacity can keep civil war from the North hereafter. The followers of
the Seymours and other ultra Democrats of the North are not more loyal
than were nine-tenths of the Southern people in 1860. Few of them now
think of becoming rebels, but they would as readily rebel as did the
Southern men who have filled the armies of Lee and Beauregard, and who
have poured