The Great Conspiracy, Complete

by John Alexander Logan

The discovery of the great gold fields of California, and the enormous amount of the precious metal poured by her for many succeeding years into the lap of the Nation, alone averted what otherwise would inevitably have been total ruin. As it was, in 1860, the National credit had sunk to a lower point than ever before in all its history. It was confessedly bankrupt, and ruin stalked abroad throughout the United States.

But while, with rapid pen, the carrying out of that part of the Southern Conspirators' Disunion programme which related to Free-Trade, is thus brought again to mind, the other part of that programme, which related to Slavery, must not be neglected or overlooked. On this question they had determined, as we have seen, to agitate without ceasing—having in view, primarily, as already hinted, the extension of Slave territory and the resulting increase of Slave power in the Land; and, ulteriorly, the solidifying of that power, and Disunion of the Republic, with a view to its conversion into an Oligarchy, if not a Monarchy.

The bitterness of the struggle over the admission of Missouri as a Slave State in 1820, under the Missouri Compromise, was to be revived by the Conspirators, at the earliest possible moment.

Accordingly in 1836—only three years after the failure of Nullification in South Carolina, the Territory, of Arkansas was forced in as a Slave State, and simultaneously the Slave-owning henchmen of the Conspirators, previously settled there for the purpose, proclaimed the secession from Mexico, and independence, of Texas. This was quickly followed, in 1844, by Calhoun's hastily negotiated treaty of annexation with Texas; its miscarriage in the Senate; and the Act of March 2, 1845—with its sham compromise—consenting to the admission of Texas to the Union of States.

Then came the War with Mexico; the attempt by means of the Wilmot proviso to check the growing territorial-greed and rapacity of the Slave-power; and the acquisition by the United States, of California and New Mexico, under the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, which brought Peace.

Then occurred the agitation over the organization of Territorial governments for Oregon, California, and New Mexico, and the strong effort to extend to the Pacific Ocean the Missouri-Compromise line of 36 30', and to extend to all future Territorial organizations the principles of that compromise.

Then came the struggle in 1850, over the admission of California as a State, and New Mexico and Utah to Territorial organization—ending in the passage of Clay's Compromise measures of 1850.

Yet still the Southern Conspirators—whose forces, both in Congress and out, were now well-disciplined, compacted, solidified, experienced, and bigotedly enthusiastic and overbearing—were not satisfied. It was not their intention to be satisfied with anything less than the destruction of the Union and of our Republican form of Government. The trouble was only beginning, and, so far, almost everything had progressed to their liking. The work must proceed.

In 1852-3 they commenced the Kansas-Nebraska agitation; and, what with their incessant political and colonizing movements in those Territories; the frequent and dreadful atrocities committed by their tools, the Border-ruffians; the incessant turmoil created by cruelties to their Fugitive-slaves; their persistent efforts to change the Supreme Court to their notions; these—with the decision and opinion of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case—together worked the Slavery question up to a dangerous degree of heat, by the year 1858.

And, by 1860—when the people of the Free States, grown sick unto death of the rule of the Slave-power in the General Government, arose in their political might, and shook off this "Old Man of the Sea," electing, beyond cavil and by the Constitutional mode, to the Presidential office, a man who thoroughly represented in himself their conscience, on the one hand, which instinctively revolted against human Slavery as a wrong committed against the laws of God, and their sense of justice and equity on the other, which would not lightly overlook, or interfere with vested rights under the Constitution and the laws of man—the Conspirators had reached the point at which they had been aiming ever since that failure in 1832 of their first attempt at Disunion, in South Carolina.