In the month of November, 1860, culminated the plot against our National existence. The conspiracy originated in South Carolina, and had a growth, more or less checked by circumstances, of over thirty years.

For John C. Calhoun had conceived the idea of an independent position for that State some time previous to the passage of the nullification ordinance' in November, 1832. This man, although he bore no resemblance in personal qualities to the Roman conspirator, is chargeable with the same crime which Cicero urged against Cataline-that of 'corrupting the youth.' His mind was too logical to adopt the ordinary propositions about slavery, such as, 'a great but necessary evil;'' we did not plant it, and now we have it, we can't get rid of it,' and the like; but, placing his back to the wall where it was impossible to outflank him, he defended it, by all the force of his subtle intellect, as a permanent institution. His followers refined on their master's lessons, and asserted that it was one of the pillars on which a republic must rest! Here was the origin of the most wicked and most audacious plot ever attempted against any government. This plot did not involve any contest for political power in the administration of

public affairs. That, the Southern leaders already possessed, but with that they were not content. They were determined to destroy the Republic itself, — to literally blot it out of existence. And why? What could betray intelligent and educated men, persons esteemed wise in their generation, into an attempt which amazes the civilized world, and at which posterity will be appalled? We answer, it was the old leaven which has worked always industriously in the breast of man since the creation AMBITION. Corrupted by the idea that a model republic must have slavery for its basis, knowing that the free States could not much longer tolerate the theory, certain leading individuals decided to dismember the country. They cast their eyes across Texas to the fertile plains of Mexico, and so southward. They indulged in the wildest dreams of conquest and of empire. The whole southern continent would in time be occupied and under their control. An aristocracy was to be built up, on which possibly a monarchy would be engrafted. In this way a new feudal system was to be developed, negro for serf, and a race of noble creatures spring forth, the admirable of the earth, whose men should be famed as the world's chivalry, and whose women should be the most