e
composed of slaveholders; a political economy founded on slave labor,
free trade, illicit trade, and African kidnapping, were associations
that would require great strength and influence to sustain them. The
strongest military organization was therefore contemplated. In this,
much employment could be given to the non-slaveholding masses, while
military qualities of supposed superiority would enable the Southern
Confederacy to enter into a successful contest with the North for
empire. The potency of 'King Cotton' was to be made the powerful agency
with which the rest of the civilized world was to be dragooned into
acquiescence. On this delusive dream was built the fabric of that mighty
empire, whose history, from its origin to its subversion, is nearly
ready to be written.

It must be acknowledged that the leading influences of the rebellion
were as sharp-sighted as political vice, or political immorality is ever
capable of becoming. Like all other vice, however, it based its
reasonings and supposititious strength exclusively on its powers of
deception, in conjunction with the iniquitous aptitudes of itself and
its coadjutors. It found co-plotters in Mozart Hall, in the stockholders
of the African Slave-trade Association, scattered from Maine to Texas,
and in its suborned press in New-York, Baltimore, Charleston, and
New-Orleans. It had bargained with the politically vitiated portion of
the Northern Democracy for assistance, and had received a wicked though
fallacious assurance from the Northern kidnappers, to the effect, that
the Democracy of the North would neutralize any attempt to oppose
secession by force. They had arranged for their diplomatic influence on
the other side of the Atlantic, and bargained for the subversion of
Democracy in the South. It planned beforehand for arming treason and
disarming the Union, and most adroitly were its plans in this respect
carried into effect. It had gained over to its side most of the Southern
material in the little army and navy of the country, and prepared it for
perfidy, in committing devastation or theft on the public property. Thus
allied and thus equipped, in the confidence of its pernicious strength,
it commenced its warfare on society.

'How much injury can we inflict upon the North? How much of the debts
owing to Northern citizens can we confiscate? How much property in the
South owned by Northern men can we appropriate? How much can we make
Northern commerce suffe