political abolitionism. The candidates of the party are not such as we prefer, but perhaps they are better than the Democratic party will support. Turn the question which way we will, which side in or out, up or down, it has an ugly look, and whichever of the two parties accedes to power, we must expect trouble, confusion, and not much good to compensate for it.

However, the end of the republic is not yet, nor will the coming election, however it terminates, decide its fate. We may trust something to the "chapter of accidents," that is. to Providence, and in the meantime instead of staking all on the success or defeat of this or that party, we shall do well to labor to clear up the questions now agitated, and present the true issue before the people for a future election. Let the South abandon all filibustering tendencies, all disposition to reopen the slave trade, cease to ask the North to favor slavery, and leave the question of slavery in the territories to be decided by the courts, and all disputes on the slavery question, so far as we are concerned, would cease, that is, as a question to be carried into politics; or, let the Republican party agree to the same, or cease to claim for congress the power to legislate on slavery anywhere, and the North and the South may once more act together. Slavery would gain nothing but what it is entitled to, and the welfare of the whole people, the cause of republican government would gain much. Neither the North nor the South is a complete or whole people without the other. It is, no doubt, too late for the voice of reason to be heard in the present canvass; but let those who really love their country hold themselves ready, when the contest is over, to place American politics on a new and better footing, and so to organize parties that an honest man may find a party he can support without violence to his conscience.

THE GREAT REBELLION.

[From Brownson's Quarterly Review for July, 1861.]

THE closing days of Mr. Buchanan's administration, which had managed to bring the country to the brink of ruin, were gloomy and sullen, and we were disposed to take a somewhat desponding view of the crisis in our national affairs. The Republicans, who had triumphed in the election of Mr. Lincoln, were apparently divided among themselves as to the course the new government should take; there seemed nowhere, either North or South, any decided attachment to the Union: and rebellion was as openly avowed, and almost as fiercely defended in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, as in Baltimore, Charleston, and New Orleans;, there was a general distrust of the officers of the army and navy; traitors were everywhere; wisdom, energy, patriotism, nowhere. The gulf states pretended to have seceded, and had formed a provisional government under the name of the "Confederate States of America." North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland, if not Kentucky and Tennessee, it was known were ready to withdraw from the Union the moment that it was clearly ascertained that they could no longer effectually serve the cause of rebellion by remaining in it. Arkansas was pledged to the confederacy, and there was a strong secession party in Missouri. A confederate army was organized, and the rebels had plenty of arms, taken from the forts and arsenals of the United States. The treasury was empty; the credit of the government was low; and the feeble federal army and navy were so dispersed as to require months to concentrate them, or to render them of any efficiency in supporting the Union. A long peace and a general belief that wars on this continent were no longer to be apprehended, had left our militia without effective organization, and, for the most part, nothing more than the mere raw material of soldiers. The great bulk of the people seemed to be wholly engrossed in trade and speculation, selfish, and incapable of any disinterested, heroic, or patriotic effort. What wonder, then, that we were despondent, without hope for the future?

But since then the whole aspect of affairs has changed, and we are obliged to confess that we had underrated the patriotism and attachment to the Union of the people of the non-slaveholding states. The administration has been able to replenish, not on very unreasonable terms, the exhausted treasury, and the call of the president for seventy-five thousand volunteers to save the national capital and stay the tide of rebellion, was within three weeks responded to from the several free states, it is said, with an offer of the services of more than half a million of men. States and municipalities, within the same period, voted, as a free gift to the government for arming, equipping, and training volunteers. or supporting their families, over twenty-three millions of dollars. Party lines were obliterated, divisions were healed, and there was an outburst of patriotism such as the world has rarely, if ever, witnessed, from twenty millions of freemen. The star-spangled banner was thrown to the breeze from every public edifice, from every church steeple, and almost from every house; and from the mighty heart of all the free states rung out the battle-cry, "The Union must and shall be preserved." Since the fall of Sumter on the 14th of April, up to the 1st of June, an efficient land force of not less, it is said, than a hundred and fifty thousand men has been organized, armed, and equipped, and is either on the frontiers or drilling in the different camps in the several states. Another levy of a hundred thousand men, if made, would be cheerfully responded to, as indeed would be a levy of twice that number. The only embarrassment of the government thus far has grown out of its inability to accept the numbers of volunteers offering. Ships-of-war have been recalled, a powerful fleet fitted out, and nearly all the ports of the states in which rebellion is rampant, are effectually blockaded. Nearly all the strategic points are guarded, the advance of the rebels effectually checked, the posts in the rebellious states that continued in the possession of the government effectually reinforced, and a forward movement commenced. All this has been done in six weeks. The simple enumeration of these facts proves that we, as well as others, had wronged our countrymen, and that our fears for the safety of the Union were uncalled for.

We do not believe that the history of the world presents an instance of so much having been done and in so short a time by any people. The uprising of the free states in defence of their government and flag is unprecedented, and

proves that however the American people may have degenerated during fifty years of peace and unbounded prosperity, they are still a people who have a future and are far from having fallen into the past; that they are full of life and energy, of ardor and hope, and have a long and, if they choose, a glorious career before them. As to the military spirit of our people, we have never doubted it. We have said on more occasions than one, that give the American people a cause, an occasion, a battle field, and they would prove themselves the first military nation in the world. They have in their composition the activity of the Frenchman, the reckless daring of the Irishman, the steadiness of the German, and the pluck of the Englishman; they have combined in them in admirable proportions the peculiar military virtues of the several nations of Europe. But we had feared that, made up to a great extent as they are from all the various populations of Europe, and possessing a sort of cosmopolitan character, they would be found in the hour of trial deficient in patriotism, especially in loyalty to the government of the Union. We think the events of the last six weeks ought to dissipate all fears of this sort, at least so far as the real American people, the people of the non-slaveholding states are concerned. We feel for ourselves that we still have a country, and whatever may be the future, we are proud of our countrymen, and still glory in being an American.

It is too late to discuss the merits of the controversy between the United States and the rebels now in arms against the government. Our views with regard to that controversy are well known to our readers. No man in the Union, according to his ability, and sphere of influence, has done more to prevent the spread of abolitionism, or to defend against fanatics of either section of the Union the constitutional rights of the South or slaveholding states. From 1828 down to the present moment, the editor of this Review has never faltered or wavered in his defence of state rights, or in his opposition to centralism or consolidation. He was, as is well known, the personal and political friend of John C. Calhoun, and for a time defended even his doctrine of nullification. His sympathies have always been with the South, and his warmest personal and political friends have been in that section of the country. But he owes it to himself to say that he has always been attached to the Union of these states, and felt that his loyalty as a citizen was due to

the federal government. He has always looked upon the several states as integral parts of one common country, and whether in Wisconsin or Michigan, in Ohio or Indiana, Illinois or Missouri, Kentucky or Tennessee, Louisiana or Alabama, South Carolina or Virginia, Maryland or Pennsylvania, New York or Connecticut, Rhode Island or Massachusetts, Maine or Vermont, he was still in his own country, on his own native soil, among his own countrymen and fellow-citizens. Patriotism, with him, has always meant love to the whole country under the jurisdiction of the federal government. He has never understood it to be restricted to his native state, or to the state of which, for the time being, he might be a citizen. In his patriotism he has known no North, no South, no East, no West. For him every man was his countryman who was born under the flag of the Union. He has always regarded the federal government, though a government of express and delegated powers, as possessing, within the sphere of its constitutional powers, the character of a real government, vested with true sovereignty. Though formed by sovereign states, by mutual compact, he has never held it, when formed, to be a simple league or confederation of states, but a proper national government, and entitled to the allegiance of every American citizen. He has never admitted the actual right of any state to secede from the Union, and the doctrine of nullification which he at one time held he had disavowed in these pages so long ago as in 1847.

We owe it furthermore to ourselves to say that though opposed to the abolition party movement, we have never approved of slavery. Regarding slavery as a local institution existing only by municipal law or usage, we have always treated it as a subject over which the Union had, in the ordinary exercise of its powers, no authority, and as lying in our political system wholly within the jurisdiction of the state in which it is established. In our political action we have insisted on leaving it to the slaveholding states themselves, to be disposed of as they should judge proper. But as a man, as a philosopher, as a Christian, and as a statesman, we have always been opposed to it. We have regarded it as a flagrant violation of those fundamental rights of man on which our republic professes to be founded, no less than of that brotherhood of the human race asserted by the Gospel. We have believed it wrong in principle, mischievous in practice, a grave evil to the slave,