Page:A key to the disunion conspiracy. The partisan leader (IA keytodisunion00tuckrich).pdf/10

vi rupted—so that Secession might march unmolested over the prostrate form of our noble Government. The one purpose of disunion has been for the greater part of the time the animating principle of State rights' policy, since Calhoun and his adherents stealthily wormed themselves into the citadel of the Democracy. Even so apparently insignificant a matter as the repair and return of the English ship Resolute to the British Government, was undoubtedly due to the anxiety of the Southern Confederates to conciliate the good will of England, and secure for them her future alliance. The Secessionists courted and used the Democratic party from 1837 to 1860, and in the latter year, at Charleston, having no further use for that organization, ruthlessly rent it asunder. Without dispute our country is suffering from the effects of a conspiracy unparalleled in its nature and extent in the history of mankind. In comparison with it the conspiracy of Catiline and Cethegus in ancient Rome fades into meanness and insignificance. The American conspiracy is now and may ever continue its own only parallel.

In addition to the testimony furnished by the past history and present circumstances of the country, in proof of the above positions, there is happily a piece of irresistible evidence supplied us in the pages of a most remarkable work written and secretly printed in the years 1835 and 1836, in which nearly every important point of the great conspiracy which is developing itself in our own immediate day, stands distinctly shadowed forth. Composed in the form of a novel, its twin object was to excite the South to rebellion, and to teach how to make that rebellion successful. It was "a tale of the future," and wonderfully is that "future" fulfilling its predictions. Indeed, the Jeff. Davises, Yanceys, Pryors, Rhetts, Letchers, etc., seem little else than servilely to follow out the programme sketched them in this remarkable book. Its author, Professor, of William and Mary College, Virginia, and but recently deceased, was one of the most trusted friends and devoted partisans of Mr. Calhoun, and had he lived till to-day, would have witnessed no feeble promise of the complete fulfilment of his own prophecies. The circumstances under which "The Partisan Leader" was ushered into existence sufficiently indicate its object and character. The manuscript was placed in the hands of Mr. Calhoun's connexion and con-