The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1861-11-19
The Arch-Conspirators, Mason and
Slidell.


fall the conspirators in the work of this South.
ern rebellion, no two are more guilty than James
M. Mason and John Slidell. So universal is this
opinion among our loyal people, that the cap
ture of these two prominent traitors, in the
public estimation, almost eclipses the late
splendid achievement Of our navy in the sacred
waters of South Carolina. Captain Wilkes, at
all events, divides with Com Dupont the honors
of the day, in having had the moral courage to
beard the British lion himself, to the end Ct
making wholesome example of these arch
conspirators Mason and Slidell.
Mason is Virgnian, and an aristocrat of the
straghtest Sect Proud of the old English Cava-
Tiers from whom he is descended, be inherits all
their contempt of psalm-singing Puritans and
plebeian Roundheads. Thus he regards the
Yankees, or the people Of the North, with that
natural disgust Of the Cavalier which was first re-
vived in Virginia by that prince of her decayed
aristocracy, John Randolph, of Roanoke. To
Randolph the Yankee" was an adventurer,
base fellow, clock peddler, swindler, or, at
best, but vulgar upstart, whose nasal twang
of itself was sufficient to betray his inferiority
of CASTE From the time of Randolph down to this
day this, idea, taking root in Virginia, has been
diffnsed and established throughout the South
Thoroughly saturated with this miserable no
ton, Mason, of Virginia, became conspirator
for aSouthern confederacy, in order to cut loose
from these Yankee plebeians of the North,
their repulsive fanatics and vulgar reformers,
their philosophers in petticoats and their wo-
men in breaches. To Mason, royalist by de-
scent and by nature, these disgusting Yankees
were undermining all the sanctities of caste,
Church and State, and it would be worth revo-
luton to cut them off. This has been his ruling
idea-to relieve Virginia and the South from
the contamination of the Yankees. Mason has
never been plotting politician for the spoils.
As member of Congress he would not frank q
letter beyond the strict limit of the law. He
was too proud to turn the advantages Of his Off.
cial position to schemes of money making, and
too lofty to descend to the petty intrgues and
caucuses ofparty tricksters and lobby jobbers.
He despised them.
All things, however, within his reach were
made subservient to his grand ultmatum of
separation of the South from the poisonous
touch of the Yankees. Hence his adroit infu-
sion into the Fugitive Slave bill of 1850 of those
features so obnoxious to our anti-slavery PEG.
pie. His object W to keep alive the slavery
agitation, and to ALLEVIATE the North and South
from each other. Hence his exertions in behalf
of the Kansas-Nebraska bill of 1854; his visit,
with Atchison, JEFF. Davis and others, to poor
Pierce at the White House on that memorable
Sunday morning, from which visit the conspi-
rators returned to lead poor Douglas to his
ruin. and to open the box of Pandora upon the
country. Hence the labors Of Mason in behalf
of the Lecompton constitution, and hence that
Southern combination of which he was mesa-
Der, which brought our poor old President Bu-
chanan down upon his marrow bone, and in
sackcloth and ashesSand all to save the Unions
poor old man.
Mason, too, was eminently instrumental in
the humiliation Of Douglas by his removsl from
the head OF the Senate Territorial Committee;
and in that John Brown investigating commits