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NORTHERNERS AND THE MINUTE MEN.

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CHAPTER V.

There's villany abroad; this letter shall tell you more.-LOVE'S LABOR LOST.

NEARLY every northerner whom I heard of in the South, as suffering from the suspicion of Abolitionism, was really a pro-slavery man, who had been opposing the Abolitionists all his life. I recollect an amusing instance of a man, originally from a radical little town in Massachusetts, who had been domiciled for several years in Mississippi. While in New England, during the campaign after which Mr. Lincoln was elected, he expressed pro-slavery sentiments so odious that he was with difficulty protected from personal violence.

He was fully persuaded in his heart of hearts of the divinity of Slavery; and, I doubt not, willing to fight for it. But his northern birth made him an object of suspicion; and, immediately after the outbreak of Secession, the inexorable Minute Men waited upon him, inviting him, if he wished to save his life, to prepare to quit the State in one hour. He was compelled to leave behind property to the amount of twenty thousand dollars. His case was one of many.

Even from a Rebel standpoint, there was an unpleasant injustice about this. Perhaps Democrats were almost the only northerners now in the South-Republicans and Abolitionists staying away, in the exercise of that discretion which is the better part of valor.

I well remember thinking, as I strolled down to the post-office one evening, with a long letter in my pocket, which gave a minute and bitterly truthful description of the slave auctions:

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A LIVELY DISCUSSION.

[1861.

"If the Minute Men were to pounce upon me now, and find this dispatch, no amount of plausible talking could save me. There would be a vacancy on The Tribune staff within the next hour."

But when the message was safely deposited in the letter-box, I experienced a sort of relief in the feeling that if the Rebels were now to mob or imprison me, I should at least have the satisfaction of knowing they were not mistaking souls; and that, if I were forced to emulate Saint Paul in "labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in pains more frequent, in deaths oft," I should, in their code, most richly have earned martyrdom.

NEW ORLEANS, March 17, 1861.

Yesterday was a lively day in the Convention. Mr. Bienvenu threw a hot shot into the Secession camp, in the shape of an ordinance demanding a report of the official vote in each parish (county) by which the delegates were elected. This would prove that the popular vote of the State was against immediate Secession by a majority of several hundred. The Convention would not permit such exposure of its defiance of the popular will; and, by seventy-three to twenty-two, refused to consider the question.

A warm discussion ensued, on the ordinance for submitting the "Constitution of the Confederate States of America" to the popular vote, for ratification or rejection. The ablest argument against it was by Thomas J. Semmes, of New Orleans, formerly attorney-general of Louisiana. He is a keen, wiry-looking, spectacled gentleman, who, in a terse, incisive speech, made the best of a bad cause. The pith of his argument was, that Republican Governments are not based upon pure Democracy, but upon what Mr. Calhoun termed "concurring

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BOLDNESS OF UNION MEMBERS.

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majorities." The voters had delegated full powers to the Convention, which was the "sublimated, concentrated quintessence of the sovereignty of the people."

The speaker's lip curled with ineffable scorn as he rang the changes upon the words "mere numerical majorities." Just now, this is a favorite phrase with the Rebels throughout the South. Yet they all admit that a majority, even of one vote, in Mississippi or Virginia, justly controls the action of the State, and binds the minority. I wish they would explain why a "mere numerical majority" is more oppressive in a collection of States than in a single commonwealth.

Mr. Add Rozier, of New Orleans, in a bold speech, advocated submitting the constitution to the people. On being asked by a member-"Did you vote for the Secession ordinance several weeks ago?" he replied, emphatically:

"No; and, so help me God, I never will!"

A spontaneous outburst of applause from the lobby gave an index of the stifled public sentiment. Mr. Rozier charged that the Secessionists knew they were acting against the popular will, and dared not appeal to the people. Until the Montgomery constitution should become the law of the land, he utterly spurned it, spat upon it, trampled it under his feet.

Mr. Christian Roselius, also of this city, advocated the ordinance with equal boldness and fervor. He insisted that it was based on the fundamental principle of Republicanism-that this Convention was no Long Parliament to rule Louisiana without check or limit; and he ridiculed with merciless sarcasm Mr. Semmes's theory of the "sublimated, concentrated quintessence of the sovereignty of the people."

The inexorable majority here cut off debate, calling

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ANOTHER EXCITING DISCUSSION.

[1861.

the previous question, and defeated the ordinance by a vote of seventy-three to twenty-six.

This body is a good specimen of the Secession Oligarchy. It appointed, from its own members, the Louisiana delegates to the Convention of all the seceded States which framed the Montgomery Constitution, and now it proposes to pass finally upon their action, leaving the people quite out of sight.

March 21.

Another exciting day in the Convention. Subject: "The adoption of the Montgomery Constitution." Five or six Union members fought it very gallantly, and denounced unsparingly the plan of a Cotton Confederacy, and the South Carolina policy of trampling upon the rights of the people. The majority made little attempt to refute these arguments, but some of the angry members glared fiercely upon Messrs. Roselius, Rozier, and Bienvenu, who certainly displayed high moral and physical courage. It is easy for you in the North to denounce Secession; but to oppose it here, as those gentlemen did, requires more nerve than most men possess.

The speech of Mr. Roselius was able and bitter. This was not a constitution; it was merely a league-a treaty of alliance. It sprung from an audacious, unmitigated oligarchy. It was a retrogression of six hundred years in the science of government. We were told (here the speaker's sarcasm of manner was ludicrous and inimitable, drawing shouts of laughter even from the leading Secessionists) that this body represented the "sublimated, concentrated quintessence of the sovereignty of the people!"

He supposed that Cæsar, when he crossed the Rubicon-Augustus, when he overthrew the Roman Repub

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SECESSION IN A NUTSHELL.

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lic-Cromwell, when he broke up the Long Parliament— Bonaparte, when he suppressed the Council of Five Hundred at the point of the bayonet-Louis Napoleon, when he violated his oath to the republic, and ascended the imperial throne-were each the "sublimated, concentrated quintessence of the sovereignty of the people.'

Like the most odious tyrannies of history, it preserved the forms of liberty; but its spirit was crushed out. The Convention from which this creature crept into light had imitated the odious government of Spain-the only one in the world taxing exports—by levying an export duty upon cotton. He was surprised that the Montgomery legislators failed to introduce a second Spanish feature-the Inquisition. One was as detestable as the other.

Mr. Roselius concluded in a broken voice and with great feeling. His heart grew sad at this overthrow of free institutions. The Secession leaders had dug the grave of republican liberty, and we were called upon to assist at the funeral! He would have no part in any such unhallowed business.

Mr. Rozier, firm to the last, now offered an amendment:

That in adopting the Montgomery Constitution, "the sovereign State of Louisiana does expressly reserve the right to withdraw from the Union created by that Constitution, whenever, in the judgment of her citizens, her paramount interests may require it.”

This, of course, is Secession in a nutshell-the fundamental principle of the whole movement. But the leaders refused to take their own medicine, and tabled the proposition without discussion.

Mr. Bienvenu caused to be entered upon the journal his protest against the action of the Convention, denouncing it as an ordinance which "strips the people of