They met and organized a Confederacy which they openly declared to be the first republic founded on the right and determination of the white man to enslave the black man, and, spreading their banners, declared themselves to the Christian world of the nineteenth century as a nation organized with the full purpose and intent of perpetuating slavery.

But in the course of the struggle that followed, it became important for the new Confederation to secure the assistance of foreign powers, and infinite pains were then taken to blind and bewilder the mind of England as to the real issues of the conflict in America.

It has been often and earnestly asserted that slavery had nothing to do with this conflict; that it was a mere struggle for power; that the only object was to restore the Union as it was, with all its abuses.  It is to be admitted that expressions have proceeded from the National Administration which naturally gave rise to misapprehension, and therefore we beg to speak to you on this subject more fully.

And, first, the declaration of the Confederate States themselves is proof enough, that, whatever may be declared on the other side, the maintenance of slavery is regarded by them as the vital object of their movement.

We ask your attention under this head to the declaration of their Vice-President, Stephens, in that remarkable speech delivered on the 21st of March, 1861, at Savannah, Georgia, wherein he declares the object and purposes of the new Confederacy.  It is one of the most extraordinary papers which our century has produced.  I quote from the verbatim report in the Savannah “Republican” of the address as it was delivered in the Athenaeum of that city, on which occasion, says the newspaper from which I copy, “Mr. Stephens took his seat amid a burst of enthusiasm and applause, such as the Athenaeum has never had displayed within its walls, within ‘the recollection of the oldest inhabitant.’”

“Last, not least, the new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution,—­African Slavery as it exists among us, the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.  Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the ‘rock upon which the old Union would split.’  He was right.  What was conjecture with him is now a realized fact.  But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of Nature, that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically.  It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that,