Mr. John Watt, a citizen of Michigan, was working near Vicksburg, Miss., in January. He was accused of uttering "dangerous sentiments, and, without any formality of accusation or trial, was dragged into the woods, and hung to the limb of a tree.

Mr. H. Turner, of New Hampshire, had, for several years, spent the winter on the plantation of Woodworth and Son, near Charleston, South Carolina. He ventured one day to say to a fellow-workman, that he was in favor of Lincoln. The Vigilance Committee soon called upon him, and asked him if he said so. He did not deny it. He was immediately arrested as an abolitionist, and taken to Charleston jail. A mob surrounded the jail, with yellings demanding him. He was placed in a bare cell, and for fourteen weeks was kept in close confinement in a dark and damp dungeon, with no food but a piece of black bread and a pint of bad water each day. He was then taken to a steamer, amidst the howlings of the mob, and being robbed of his wages due, $248, and a fine watch, was left to work his passage to New York, where he arrived utterly destitute.

No American can write such narratives about his own countrymen without extreme reluctance. But these facts must be known, or one can not understand how every voice of opposition was silenced at the South. The apparent unanimity at the South, was simply the silence enforced by the bludgeon, the lash, the halter, and the stake. Hume has remarked upon the barbarizing influence of slavery in ancient Rome. Its influence has been equally debasing in our own land. Its influence upon woman's character has been still more marked than upon the character of men. That there are noble men, and lovely and lovable women, at the South, all must gladly affirm. The writer knows many such whose memory he must ever cherish with affection. But this rebellion has proved beyond all dispute, that such are the exceptions. It is the unanimous declaration of our army, that the venom exhibited by the secession females of the South is amazing and very general. Ladies, so called, would spit upon our soldiers in the streets of Baltimore. One clergyman testifies, that a woman, a member of his church, whom he had always considered a worthy member, said to him, that "she would be perfectly willing to go to hell, if she could but shoot a Yankee first." Another lady said, to a gentleman who related it to the writer, that she hoped yet "to sleep under a blanket, made of the scalps of Northerners."

But to this spirit there were many glorious exceptions,-men who suf fered every conceivable indignity, and women who braved the fiercest outrages of martyrdom, in love for their native land in all the beauty of its united strength, and who detested those traitors who were willing to deluge this land in blood.

We may close this revolting record with the following statement made by the Cincinnati Gazette, of May 18th:

Nearly every day some fresh arrivals of refugees from the violence and ferocity of the new Dahomey bring to this city fresh and corroborative proofs of the condition of affairs in the rebel States. Many of these have come thence at the peril of their lives, and to avoid threatened death, have taken a hurried journey surrounded by thick dangers from

the madmen who now fill the South with deeds of violence and bloodshed.

"The people in that section seem to have been given up to a madness that is without parallel in the history of civilization-we had almost written barbarism. They are cut off from the news of the North, purposely blinded by their leaders as to the movements and real power of the Government, and in their local presses receive and swallow the most outrageous falsehoods and misstatements.

"Yesterday, one William Silliman, a person of intelligence and reliability, reached this city, returning from a year's residence in Southern Mississippi. He was one of a party who, in 1860, went from this city, and engaged in the construction of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad.

“Mr. Silliman, for several months past, has lived in Cupola, Itawamba County, one of the lower tier of counties, two hundred miles from New Orleans, and one hundred and sixty miles from Mobile. He says a more blood-thirsty community it would be difficult to conceive. Perfect terrorism prevails, and the wildest outrages are enacted openly by the rebels, who visit with their violence all suspected of loyalty, or withholding full adherence to the kingdom of Jefferson Davis. Could the full history of these outrages be written, and that truthfully, many and most of its features would be deemed incredible and monstrous, belonging to another age, and certainly to another country than our own.

"The party who is suspected of hostility, or even light sympathy, with the rebellion, is at once seized. He is fortunate if he is allowed to leave in a given time, without flogging. He is still fortunate if only a flogging is added to the order to depart. Many have been hung or shot on the spot. Mr. Silliman details five instances of the latter as having occurred among the amiable people of Itawamba County, within the past ten weeks, of several of which he was the eye-witness, a mob wreaking their vengeance upon their victims under the approval of local authorities. These five men were Northerners, at different times assailed by the rebels. Three of them were strangers to all about them.

"On Saturday of last week a man was hung at Guntown, who refused to join the rebel army, and also refused to leave. He was taken to a tree in the outskirts of the village, and left hanging to a limb. He had a family in the place. Guntown is ten miles from Cupola. The same day, at Saltillo, a man was hung under similar circumstances, and still another at Vanona, where a traveler was seized in passing through the place. All these towns are within twenty miles' circuit of Cupola, where Mr. Silliman resided. He says that he can recall twelve instances of killing, whipping, and other outrages, thus visited upon the victims of the rebels in that vicinity, within the past two months. Many have been waiting in the hope that the storm would blow over,' but have, one after the other, been forced to submit, or seek safety in flight."

The Savannah (Georgia) Republican urged, soon after the commencement of hostilities, that all United States prisoners should be sold into slavery. "I know," says the writer, "a rich planter who would gladly take two hundred of the Yankees, on his plantation. One good black

driver to every forty Yankees, would ensure good order and lively work among them.

Those unacquainted with the state of public opinion at the South, can form but a faint conception of the arrogant assumptions of these slaveholders. On their remote plantations, surrounded only by their colored menials, not one of whom could testify in any court of justice, they ruled with a despotic power which felt no restraint. They could torture, maim, kill at pleasure. Thus they have formed a character of arrogance and of ferocity, which must excite the amazement and the execration of the civilized world. The evidence upon this point can not be resisted by any honest mind.

CHAPTER III.

THE WAR COMMENCED.

ENERGY OF THE CONSPIRATORS.-VIEWS OF SECESSIONISTS AND UNIONISTS.-TESTIMONY OF WEBSTER AND CLAY.-IGNOMINIOUS CONDUCT OF THE TRAITORS.-INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.-ANECDOTE.-FALL OF SUMTER.-UPRISING OF THE NORTH.-DEVELOPMENTS OF TREASON. RESPONSE TO THE CALL FOR 75,000 VOLUNTEERS.-NOBLE SPEECH OF SENATOR DOUGLAS.-UNION OF ALL PARTIES. TREACHERY OF REBELS IN VIRGINIA.-DESTRUCTION OF GOSPORT NAVY YARD.

ON the 22d of February, four days after the inauguration of Jefferson Davis, in Montgomery, the Collector of Customs, appointed by the rebel government in Charleston, S. C., issued the manifesto, that all vessels, from any State out of the Confederacy, would be treated as foreign vessels, and subject to the port dues and other charges established by the laws of the Confederate States. Thus, by a stroke of the pen, the immense commerce of the Northern States was declared to be foreign commerce, beneath the guns of the forts which the United States had reared, at an expense of millions of dollars.

As these outrages were progressing, the people of the Free States were waiting quietly, but with intense latent emotion, for the inauguration of President Lincoln. Nothing could be hoped for while Mr. Buchanan remained in the presidential chair; and he was probably more impatient than any other man in the United States, for the hour to arrive which would release him from the burdens of an office, which were infinitely too heavy for him to bear. He was apparently the unwilling servant of the Secessionists, and could not escape from the toils, in which he had become involved. But the Secessionists had no idea of allowing President Lincoln to be inaugurated. Though frustrated in their plan of securing his assassination, on his passage to the Capital, they were quite confident of their ability to seize Washington, and make it the metropolis of their Confederacy. One of the leading New York journals, under date of January 1, said:

"It is now well known, that military companies have been organized and drilled, for months past, in Maryland and Virginia, some of them under the eye of an officer of the regular army, and that the distinct object of their organization is, to aid in the seizure of Washington City, or the prevention, by force, of Lincoln's inauguration. Some of the less prudent of their leaders boast, in private circles, that they have five thousand well armed and organized men, ready to strike the blow instantly, upon the concerted signal being given.'

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Very energetic secret societies were organized, all through the Southern States, under the names of "Minute Men," "Vigilance Committees," and Knights of the Golden Circle," pledged to sustain the Southern Confederacy, to extend the institution of slavery, and to watch over, and, if necessary, to exterminate all suspected of disaffection. 'Great numbers of men, who ventured to speak freely, were treated with every indignity, and hung. The Hon. Mr. Iverson, of Georgia, stated boastfully in the Senate of the United States, "A Senator from Texas has told me that a great many of those free debaters were hanging from the trees of that country." Future generations will find it hard to believe that in a civilized community such atrocities could be committed as were enacted by the advocates of slavery at the South.

Very great ability was displayed by the leaders of this conspiracy. They were men of thought, of wealth, and were long accustomed to the exercise of power. They were few in numbers, and could thus act with almost the energy of a single despotic mind. Robert Toombs, of Georgia, by his talent in debate, his self-confidence, and his imperious, inexorable will, held Cobb, Crawford, and Iverson, as the willing vassals of his baronial spirit, and thus molded as he pleased the State of Georgia. When Mr. Iverson, of Georgia, withdrew from the Senate, he uttered the following arrogant menace:

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Georgia is one of six States, which, in less than sixty days, have dissolved their connection with the Federal Union, and declared their separate independence. Steps are now in progress, to form a Confederacy of their own, and, in a few weeks at furthest, a provisional government will be formed, giving them ample powers for their own defense, with power to enter into negotiations with other nations, to make war, to conclude peace, to form treaties, and to do all other things which independent nations may of right do. Provision will be made for admission of other states to the new Union, and it is confidently believed that, within a few months, all the Southern States of the late Confederacy will be formed into a Union far more homogeneous, and, therefore, far more stable than the one now broken up.

"You may acquiesce in the revolution, and acknowledge the independence of a great Confederacy, or you may make war on the seceding States, and attempt to force them back. If you acknowledge our independence, and treat us as one of the nations of the earth, you can have friendly relations and intercourse with us; you can have an equitable division of the public property and of the existing public debt of the United States. But if you make war upon us, we will seize and hold all the public property in our borders, and in our reach, and we will never pay one dollar of the public debt, for the law of nations will extinguish all public and private obligations between the States.

"The first Federal gun that is fired upon the seceding States-the first drop of blood of any of their people, shed by the Federal troops-will cancel every public and private obligation of the South, which may be due either to the Federal government or to the northern people. We care not in what shape or form, or under what pretext you undertake coercion. We shall