Mr. Parker said: “Secession is no spasmodic effort that has come suddenly upon us. It has been gradually culminating for a long period of thirty years.”
Mr. Inglis followed: “Most of us have had this matter under consideration for the last twenty years.”
Mr. Keitt, Representative in Congress, gloried in his work, saying: “I have been engaged in this movement ever since I entered political life.”
Mr. Rhett, who was in the Senate when I first entered that body, and did not hesitate then to avow himself a Disunionist, declared in the same Convention: “It is not anything produced by Mr. Lincoln’s election, or by the non-execution of the Fugitive Slave Law: it is a matter which has been gathering head for thirty years.”[213]
The conspiracy, thus exposed by Jackson, and confessed by recent parties to it, was quickened by the growing passion for Slavery throughout the Slave States. The well-known opinions of the Fathers, the declared convictions of all most valued at the foundation of the Government, and the example of Washington were discarded, and it was recklessly avowed that Slavery is a divine institution, the highest type of civilization, a blessing to master and slave alike, and the very key-stone of our national arch. A generation has grown up with this teaching, so that it is now ready to say with Satan,—
“Evil, be thou my good! by thee at least
Divided empire with Heaven’s King I hold;
By thee, and more than half perhaps, will reign:
As man, erelong, and this new world, shall know.”
It is natural that a people thus trained should listen to the voice of conspiracy. Slavery itself is a constant conspiracy; and its supporters, whether in the Slave States or elsewhere, easily become indifferent to all rights and principles by which it may be constrained.