sident
and Vice-President of the United States. Numbers increased with each
succeeding campaign. In the campaign of 1860 they put Abraham Lincoln
and Hannibal Hamlin forward as their standard bearers, and whose
avowed purpose was the "the liberation of the slaves, regardless of
the consequences." This party had spies all over the Southern States,
and these emissaries incited insurrection, taught the slaves "that by
rising at night and murdering their old masters and their families,
they would be doing God's will;" that "it was a duty they owed to
their children;" this "butchery of the sleeping and innocent whites
was the road to freedom." In Virginia they sent down armed bands of
whites, roused the negroes at night, placed guns, pikes, and arms of
every kind in the hands of the poor, deluded creatures, and in that
one night they butchered, in cold blood, the families of some of the
best men in the State. These cold blooded butcheries would have done
credit to the most cruel and blood thirsty of the primeval savages of
the forest. These deeds were heralded all over the North as "acts of
God, done by the hands of men." The leader of this diabolical plan and
his compeers were sainted by their followers and admirers, and praises
sung over him all over the North, as if over the death of saints. By
a stupendous blunder the people of the South, and the friends of the
Union generally, allowed this party to elect Lincoln and Hamlin. The
South now had no alternative. Now she must either remain in a Union,
where our institutions were to be dragged down; where the laws were
to be obeyed in one section, but not in another; where existed open
resistance to laws in one State and quiet obedience in another; where
servile insurrections were being threatened continuously; where the
slaves were aided and abetted by whites at the North in the butcheries
of their families; or secede and fight. These were the alternatives
on the one part, or a severance from the Union and its consequences
on the other. From the very formation of the government, two
constructions were put upon this constitution--the South not viewing
this compact with that fiery zeal, or fanatical adulation, as they
did at the North. The South looked upon it more as a confederation
of States for mutual protection in times of danger, and a general
advancement of those interests where the whole were concerned. Then,
again, the vast accumulation of wealth in the Southern States,