r by depression of business, privateering, or
otherwise? To what extent can we paralyze Northern mechanical industry,
subvert Northern trade, and lay it under disabilities? How much can we
distress the laboring classes in England, in France, in other countries
in Europe, whereby we may compel them to clamor for the intervention of
their respective governments against the North, and against its attempts
to uphold the Union?' The whole reasoning of the conspirators was based
on the supposed power, coupled with the intent and effort to inflict
wide-spread and common injury. The scheme and all its contemplated and
attempted incidents of management were such as the pro-slavery spirit in
politics only could engender.

It required many years of gradual development, in connection with the
ultimate culmination of treason, to shake the confidence of the North in
the disposition of the people of the South. There was, and could be, no
possible intelligent motive for the masses of the South to change their
form of government, or to enter into rebellion against it. The arguments
of the plotters of treason against a 'government of majorities'--the
doctrine of 'State rights,' with the right to secede at the option of a
State--the _quasi_ repudiation of the 'white trash,' so called, as an
element of political equality, were regarded as the ebullitions of a
politically vitiated class who would be willing to overthrow the
National Government, but who were supposed to be too few in numbers to
taint with poisonous fatality the political mind of the South. It is not
established as yet that the Southern political mind in the main has
become depraved. It is, however, established, that the leading political
influences South have cajoled and terrorized the bulk of the Southern
population into apparent acquiescence in treason. It yet remains to be
seen what disposition will be disclosed by the Southern people, as soon
as protection is guaranteed to them against the tyranny and usurpations
of the rebel influence. It is prophesied that there will be found a
heart in the bulk of the Southern population; that it will still cling
with affection and pride to that government which was their guarantee,
and which no power now on earth is competent to shake. It is not against
the deluded, the timid, or the helpless of the South that we would make
the indictment for political crime. It is the perfidious pro-slavery
spirit in politics that we seek to arraign.