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Secession and its Fruits.

The Secessionists are constantly referring to the action of our Revolutionary fathers in justification of their own damnable work, but such comparisons are odious to all friends of free Government. Our fathers had real grievances, and they exhausted all peaceable means of redress before they resorted to arms. The grievances of the Seceders are imaginary, and their first step toward a redress of imaginary wrongs is secession and war. Our fathers drew their swords for Freedom, and they had the sympathy and support of the world. They established a free Government that has become the world's wonder and the world's benefactor. Seceders have drawn the sword for Slavery, and the whole civilized world frowns upon them. They would destroy the best Government on earth, and humanity everywhere cries out against them. They would establish a despotic Government, "based upon the solid sub-stratum of African slavery." To this end they invited the co-operation of England, but the liberty-loving old Lion growled back an indignant "NO!" They sang the French hymn of Liberty and earnestly besought France to help them build up a Government based upon the foundation of Slavery! But France, who poured out blood and treasure to aid our fathers in the establishment of a free Government, sternly refuses to aid Slavery or to overthrow it; and she further intimates her willingness, if necessity should arise, to aid in preserving what she helped to establish. Every nation on earth condemns secession — all the world sympathized with our fathers. Our fathers labored to overthrow a despotic power in America — the secessionists are laboring to establish one.

The first harvest reaped by secession is the World's ill will. The North, long-suffering, patient and forbearing with the waywardness of the South, is now aroused, indignant, ready and determined to uphold the Government and punish treason, at whatever sacrifice of treasure and blood. In driving the North from them, the seceding States have lost a powerful friend and gained a terrible enemy. The secessionists are seeking collision with the Federal Government — inviting civil war. They are not prepared for peace, much less for war. They are standing over a mine liable at any moment to explode and blow them to ruin. They dare not leave their slaves unguarded a single night. In the event of civil war they would possess no adequate power to suppress insurrection. If secession leads to civil war, it will also lead to servile insurrection with all its horrors. Secession has ruined the credit of the seceding States, and the individual credit of their citizens. South Carolina has been compelled to resort to forced loans, because there is not a market in the world where her credit is good for a dollar. Mississippi has no credit anywhere, nor has she a dollar in her treasury. — She too, is extorting from her people the money they will not voluntarily tender. There is not a seceding State, nor one that contemplates secession, that can borrow money in any market in the world. Can they raise, equip and maintain armies without money or credit? Can they build and man navies without money or credit? Can they sustain their contemplated Southern Confederacy without money or credit? We think not. Secession has ruined the business interests of the seceding States. Commerce shuns their ports, and their merchants have no credit in the North or in Europe. Secession has paralyzed the arm of Southern industry, closed the avenues of Northern charity, and brought thousands of the poorer classes of the seceding States face to face with starvation. Secession has forced out of the Union thousands and hundred of thousands who are as devoted to the Union as any men in the North. These men, compelled to contribute to the support of a Government, which they detest, will always be a restless, dissatisfied and dangerous element in the Southern Confederacy. Secession is leading the commercial world to seek for other cotton fields than those of the seceding States; and the fact has already been ascertained that there are such fields, broad enough in extent to well nigh, if not entirely, supply the world with cotton.

Thus the seceding States have arrayed the world against them — arrayed hundreds of thousands of their own citizens against them — alienated the North — ruined their credit — destroyed their commerce — paralyzed their industrial arm — increased the dangers of insurrection — driven the commercial world in search of other cotton fields — and invited civil war. These are a few of the evils which have followed in the wake of secession. They are only the beginning of the end. Secession was inaugurated to perpetuate slavery — it will end in its total overthrow and entire abolition. A few weak Slave States have banded together to perpetrate a great wrong against humanity, and in their blindness they have rushed into war with an anti-slavery world! The result is not doubtful.