officials had but a short time to exercise their power. These were, however, not the causes of Southern revolt, for Mr. Alexander H. Stephens frankly admitted that the South had always possessed the control of the Government; had a majority of the presidents chosen from among themselves, and the management of most of those chosen from the North; had sixty years of presidents, while the North had only twentyfour; had eighteen judges of the Supreme Court and only eleven sprung from the North, and this they had required to guard against any interpretation of the Constitution unfavourable to Southern interests. Presidents of the Senate bad been twenty-four for the South, against eleven for the North; and speakers of the house twenty-three to twelve; attorneygenerals fourteen for the South, against five for the North; and foreign ministers eighty-six to fifty-four; though threefourths of the business requiring diplomatic agencies abroad were from the free states. The higher officers of army and navy were, by a vast majority, men of the South, while the soldiers and sailors were Northerns. More than twothirds of clerks, auditors, comptrollers filling the executive departments, two thousand out of three, for the last fifty years, have been nominees of the South, though only onethird of the white population of the entire country belonged to the South, and more than three-fourths of the revenue collected for the support of the Government have uniformly been raised from the North. These are admissions made by Mr. Stephens, after Mr. Lincoln had been elected, and in answer to himself at the time when Mr. Stephens inquired

"What right has the North assailed? What interest of the South has been invaded? What justice has been denied? And what claim founded in justice and right has been withheld? Can either of you to-day name one governmental act of wrong deliberately and purposely done by the Government of Washington, of which the South has a right to complain? I challenge the answer."

COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE.

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It is strange, that a man proclaiming such views and facts, should yet so soon after accept the vice-presidency of the rebellious confederacy? Some other potent cause, adequate to the occasion must have influenced him and the other leaders to this final and fatal secession. For a brief season Anglican sympathizers with them, imported into the representation of their motives the Morrill tariff, and the protectionist policy of Northern manufacturers.

The itinerant orators of the South have great faith in the powers of perversion, when remembering the admissions of Mr. H. A. Stephens already recited, they stand up in public assemblies, and affirm that taxation had been imposed upon the Southern States by the North; that thus heavy duties have been laid (by the North) upon every article made in Great Britain and Europe, and a line of policy has been adopted to make the South buy the commodities manufactured in the North at the prices fixed by them; and gradually the tariff has been fixed so high as to render it difficult in the extreme for Southerns to obtain articles of European manufacture!

At the close of the year 1859 there was much nervous excitement in Congress about the state of the country apprehending civil war. Mr. Buchanan was still president. A select committee of thirty-three-one member of Congress from each of the states-was appointed to ascertain if possible how the differences could be removed, and what the South demanded. The deliberations and inquiries of this committee were embodied in a report; they had continued in session from 11th December, 1859, till 14th January, 1860. The Slave States had been asked what they wanted. Their grievances from first to last all referred to the maintenance of slavery, demanding from the North powers to increase slavery, to extend it and make treaties with foreign powers requiring the surrender of escaped slaves-slavery throughout, and not one syllable about the tariff or taxa

tion, but slavery was only the burden of complaint from the Southern States and by their representatives. The champions of their cause in England are wiser.

The bait was probably designed for the free trade portion of the British people; but it was not warranted by the allegations of the Southerns themselves. Mr. Jefferson Davis, Mr. Cushing, Mr. Crittenden and Mr. Stephens, being witnesses, we have a uniform testimony that the interests of slave-holding and slave-dealing proprietors were the dominating motive in their proceedings; and that not only to maintain slavery as it had been, but to extend the area of its operations, and to render all the lands and states of the Republic subordinate to its maintenance, and all the functionaries and operations of law, and all the people and revenues of the United States, subject to its ministration, enforcement, and promotion: such must be the end and design of the American Union. Mr. Jefferson Davis had in 1858, at Jackson, warned the slave-holders of his state in words of plain and direct significance:

"If an abolitionist be chosen president of the United States, you will have presented to you the question of whether you will permit the government to pass into the hands of your avowed and implacable enemies. Without pausing for an answer, I will state my own position to be that such a result would be a species of revolution by which the purposes of government would be destroyed, and the mere forms entitled to no respect. In that event, in such a manner as should be most expedient, I should deem it your duty to provide for your safety outside the Union."

He again offered on the 22nd December, 1860, in the Congress of the United States, before he retired to effect and perfect his rebellion, his ultimatum:

"That it shall be declared by amendment of the constitution that property in slaves, recognized as such by the local law of any of the states of the Union, shall stand on the same footing in all constitutional and federal relations as any other species of property so recognized; and, like other pro

CRITTENDEN'S COMPROMISE.

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perty, shall not be subject to be divested or impaired by the local law of any other State, either in escape thereto or by the transit or sojourn of the owner therein. And in no case whatever shall such property be subject to be divested or impaired by any legislative act of the United States, or any of the territories thereof."

Mr. John Crittenden, a Senator from Kentucky, interposed as mediator from a slave state, with a design to meet difficulties by a compromise, and proposed—

"1. That by amendment of the constitution, slavery should be allowed and recognized in all the territory south of latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes.

"2. That Congress should have no power to abolish slavery in the States permitting it.

"3. That Congress should have no power to abolish slavery in the district of Columbia, while it exists in Virginia and Maryland; nor to prohibit the officers of the government and members of Congress from bringing slaves therein, and holding them as such.

"4. That Congress should have no power to hinder the transportation of slaves from one State to another, by land, or navigable rivers, or sea.

"5. That Congress should have full power to pay to the owner of any fugitive slave the full value thereof, when the national officer is prevented arresting such fugitive.

"6. That Congress should never have power to interfere with slavery in the states where it is now permitted.

"7. That the right to have property in men should be legal, not only in the territory then in possession, but also in all territory to be thereafter acquired."

Mr. Cushing had been Attorney-General of the United. States; and was, at the beginning of the present struggle, a leading member of Legislature in South Carolina. In his own name he had declared, "The Union is in danger, not by reason of invasion from abroad, but from revolution at home, produced by a conflict of opinion and action between the Northern and Southern states as to slave labour, which exists in Southern states alone;" and on the 20th of December, 1860, when South Carolina seceded and issued her Address, he joined in language which leaves no doubt what caused the conflict.

'Agitation on the subject of slavery in the South is the natural result of a consolidation of government. Experience has proved that slave-holding states cannot be safe in subjection to non-slave-holding states. The people of the North have not left us in doubt as to their designs and policy. In the late presidential election they have elected as an exponent of their policy one who has openly declared that all the states of the United States must be free states;" not one word about tariffs, commercial grievances, or different interests. "Citizens of the slave-holding states of the United States, Providence has cast our lot together by extending over us an identity of pursuits, interests, and institutions. South Carolina desires no destiny separated from yours. To be one of a great Slave-holding Confederacy, stretching its arms over a territory larger than any power in Europe possesses, with productions which make our existence more important to the world than that of any other people inhabiting it, with common institutions to defend, and common dangers to encounter, we ask your sympathy and federation. United together, and we must be the most independent, as we are the most important, amongst the nations of the world: united together, and we require no other instrument to conquer peace than our beneficent productions. We ask you to join us in forming a Confederacy of Slave-holding States."

New converts are often more explicit and frank than their masters, and Mr. A. H. Stephens inaugurated his adhesion to the new doctrine, when he had accepted the vicepresidency of the Confederacy, in language which cannot be misunderstood. With vaunting triumph he proclaimed:-

"Our new government is founded on the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man, that slavery is his natural and normal condition. Our new government is the first in the history of the world based on this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This stone, which the first builders rejected, is become the chief stone of the corner in our new edifice. Negro slavery is but in its infancy. We ought to increase and expand our institutions. All nations when they cease to grow begin to die. We should, then, endeavour to expand and grow. Central America, Mexico, are all open to us."

Dr. Palmer, New Orleans, confirmed the doctrine of Mr. Stephens :