The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 1, January 1862 / Devoted to Literature and National Policy

New York: JOHN F. TROW, 50 GREENE STREET, (FOR THE PROPRIETORS.) 1864.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by JOHN F. TROW, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.
JOHN A. GRAY PRINTER & STEREOTYPER, 16 and 18 Jacob St.
BOSTON: J. R. GILMORE, 110 TREMONT STREET NEW YORK: GEORGE P. PUTNAM, 532 BROADWAY. ROSS & TOUSEY, AND H. DEXTER AND COMPANY PHILADELPHIA T. B. PETERSON & BROTHER
THE FEBRUARY NUMBER OF THE CONTINENTAL Will be issued about the 15th of January, and will contain contributions from the following among other eminent writers: HON. HORACE GREELEY, HENRY T. TUCKERMAN, REV. F. W. SHELTON, RICHARD B. KIMBALL, BAYARD TAYLOR, J. WARREN NEWCOMB, JR., HENRY P. LELAND, THE AUTHOR OF THE COTTON STATES, CHARLES G. LELAND, and CHARLES F. BROWNE. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1801, by JAMES R. GILMORE, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. Press of Geo. C. Rand & Avery, 3 Cornhill, Boston.
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 beautiful and most accomplished of all the daughters of Eve. The peaceful drudge and artisan of the North, ox-like in their character, should serve them as they might require, and the craven man of commerce should buy and sell for their accommodation. For the rest, the negro would suffice. This was the extraordinary scheme of the South Carolina 'aristocrat,' and with which he undertook to infect certain unscrupulous leaders throughout the cotton and sugar States. It was no part of the plan of the conspirators to precipitate the border States into rebellion. O no! On the contrary, it was specially set forth in the programme entrusted to the exclusive few, that those States were to remain in the 'Old Union' as a fender between the 'South' and the free States; always ready in Congress to stand up for a good fugitive slave law, and various other little privileges, and prepared to threaten secession if Congress did not yield just what was demanded. In this way the free States would be perpetually entangled by embarrassing questions, and the new empire left to pursue unrestricted its dazzling plans of conquest and occupation.