The Great Conspiracy | Page 7

OF THE FUTURE--AN UNHEEDED PRESENTIMENT--AT FORD'S THEATRE--THE LAST ACCLAMATION OF THE PEOPLE--THE PISTOL SHOT THAT HORRIFIED THE WORLD--SCULKING, RED HANDED TREASON--THE ASSASSINATION PLOT-COMPLICITY OF THE REBEL AUTHORITIES, BELIEVED BY THE BEST INFORMED MEN--TESTIMONY AS TO THREE ATTEMPTS TO KILL LINCOLN--THE CHIEF REBEL-CONSPIRATORS "RECEIVE PROPOSITIONS TO ASSASSINATE"--A NATION'S WRATH--ANDREW JOHNSON'S VEHEMENT ASSEVERATIONS--"TREASON MUST BE MADE ODIOUS"-- RECONSTRUCTION
CHAPTER XXXII.
TURNING BACK THE HANDS
"RECONSTRUCTION" OF THE SOUTH--MEMORIES OF THE WAR, DYING OUT--THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH AMENDMENTS--THE SOUTHERN STATES REHABILITATED BY ACCEPTANCE OF AMENDMENTS, ETC.--REMOVAL OF REBEL DISABILITIES-- CLEMENCY OF THE CONQUERORS--THE OLD CONSPIRATORS HATCH A NEW CONSPIRACY --THE "LOST CAUSE" TO BE REGAINED--THE MISSISSIPPI SHOT-GUN PLAN--FRAUD, BARBARITY, AND MURDERS, EFFECT THE PURPOSE--THE "SOUTH" CEMENTED "SOLID" BY BLOOD--PEONAGE REPLACES SLAVERY--THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1876-- THE TILDEN "BARREL," AND "CIPHER DISPATCHES"--THE "FRAUD" CRY--THE OLD LEADERS DICTATE THE DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE OF 1880--THEIR FREE- TRADE ISSUE TO THE FRONT AGAIN--SUCCESSIVE DEMOCRATIC EFFORTS TO FORCE FREE-TRADE THROUGH THE HOUSE, SINCE REBELLION--EFFECT OF SUCH EFFORTS-- REPUBLICAN MODIFICATIONS OF THEIR OWN PROTECTIVE TARIFF--THE "SOLID SOUTH" SUCCEEDS, AT LAST, IN "ELECTING" ITS CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT--IS THIS STILL A REPUBLIC, OR IS IT AN OLIGARCHY?
CHAPTER XXXIII.
WHAT NEXT?
THE PRESENT OUTLOOK--COMMERCIAL PROSPECTS, BRIGHT--WHAT THE PEOPLE OF THE NORTHERN AND WESTERN STATES SEE--WHAT IS A "REPUBLICAN FORM OF GOVERNMENT?"--WHAT DID THE FATHERS MEAN BY IT--THE REASON FOR THE GUARANTEE IN THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION--PURPOSES OF "THE PEOPLE" IN CREATING THIS REPUBLIC--THE "SOLID-SOUTHERN" OLIGARCHS DEFEAT THOSE PURPOSES--THE REPUBLICAN PARTY NOT BLAMELESS FOR THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THINGS--THE OLD REBEL-CHIEFTAINS AND COPPERHEADS, IN CONTROL--THEY GRASP ALMOST EVERYTHING THAT WAS LOST BY THE REBELLION--THEIR GROWING AGGRESSIVENESS--THE FUTURE--"WATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE NIGHT?"

PORTRAITS.
MAPS.
SEAT OF WAR IN VIRGINIA.
FIRST BULL RUN BATTLE-FIELD.
FIRST BULL RUN BATTLE-FIELD, SHOWING POSITION OF ARMIES.
EDWARD D. BAKER, BENJ. F. BUTLER, J. C. BRECKINRIDGE, JOHN C. CALHOUN, HENRY CLAY, J. J. CRITTENDEN, HENRY WINTER DAVIS, JEFFERSON DAVIS, SIMON CAMERON, STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS, JOHN C. FREMONT, H. W. HALLECK, ISAAC W. HAYNE, PATRICK HENRY, DAVID HUNTER, THOMAS JEFFERSON, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, GEO. B. MCCLELLAN, THAD. STEVENS, WM. H. SEWARD, LYMAN TRUMBULL, BENJ. F. WADE, DANIEL WEBSTER, LOUIS T. WIGFALL.
CHAPTER I.
A PRELIMINARY RETROSPECT.
To properly understand the condition of things preceding the great war of the Rebellion, and the causes underlying that condition and the war itself, we must glance backward through the history of the Country to, and even beyond, that memorable 30th of November, 1782, when the Independence of the United States of America was at last conceded by Great Britain. At that time the population of the United States was about 2,500,000 free whites and some 500,000 black slaves. We had gained our Independence of the Mother Country, but she had left fastened upon us the curse of Slavery. Indeed African Slavery had already in 1620 been implanted on the soil of Virginia before Plymouth Rock was pressed by the feet of the Pilgrim Fathers, and had spread, prior to the Revolution, with greater or less rapidity, according to the surrounding adaptations of soil, production and climate, to every one of the thirteen Colonies.
But while it had thus spread more or less throughout all the original Colonies, and was, as it were, recognized and acquiesced in by all, as an existing and established institution, yet there were many, both in the South and North, who looked upon it as an evil--an inherited evil-- and were anxious to prevent the increase of that evil. Hence it was that even as far back as 1699, a controversy sprang up between the Colonies and the Home Government, upon the African Slavery question--a controversy continuing with more or less vehemence down to the Declaration of Independence itself.
It was this conviction that it was not alone an evil but a dangerous evil, that induced Jefferson to embody in his original draft of that Declaration a clause strongly condemnatory of the African Slave Trade--a clause afterward omitted from it solely, he tells us, "in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never* attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it," as well as in deference to the sensitiveness of Northern people, who, though having few slaves themselves, "had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others" a clause of the great indictment of King George III., which, since it was not omitted for any other reason than that just given, shows pretty conclusively that where the fathers in that Declaration affirmed that "all men are created equal," they included in the term "men," black as well as white, bond as well as free; for the clause ran thus: "Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every Legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting those