outh, the
intended establishment of a different order of government, based on
privilege of class, has appeared to be the ruling motive. They have set
down the expressed apprehension as to the insecurity of slavery as a
hypocritical pretext for revolution; believing that the more absorbing
motive was to establish an order of nobility, either with or without
monarchy. There is some plausibility for giving the ambitious motive the
greater prominence; but a more severe analysis of the whole question
will, it is believed, place slavery perpetuation in the foreground as
the origin of all other motives for the conspiracy.

In classifying slaveholders, it is undoubtedly true that a small portion
of them were Democrats in principle, and ardently attached to the
National Government--perhaps would have preferred the abolition of
slavery to the subversion of its jurisdiction. Another class, composing
a majority, though distrusting the National Government, connected as it
was and must be with a voting power representing twenty-six or seven
millions of free labor, yet more distrusted the attempt at revolution.
This class saw more danger in the proposed revolt than from continuing
in the Union. Another class were politically ambitious; had ventured
upon the revilement of the Democratic principle; had become
secessionists _per se_, and were the instruments and plotters of the
treason. This was substantially the condition of public opinion among
slaveholders at the time of the election of Mr. Lincoln to the
Presidency. These three classes, embracing the slaveholders and their
families, composed about one million five hundred thousand of the white
population of the South.

Of the seven millions non-slaveholding population South, a small portion
was engaged in trade and commerce, and naturally inclined to oppose
secession; but timid in its apprehensions as to protection, was ready to
acquiesce in the most extravagant opinions; in other words, like trade
and commerce every where, too much disposed to make merchandise of its
politics. The balance of the non-slaveholding population, if we except a
venal pulpit and press, had not even a specious motive, pecuniary or
political, moral or social, that should have drawn it into rebellion. It
was a part and portion of the great brother-hood of free labor, and could
not by any possibility raise up a plausible pretense of jealousy against
its natural ally--free labor in the North.

In estimating