The Burlington weekly hawk-eye. [volume] (Burlington [Iowa]) 1860-1876, 1861-03-30
The Object Of Secession.

Mr.. Spratt, OF South Carolina, one of the lea
ding spirits in the secession movement has writ
ten letter to somebody in Louisiana disclosing
the ultimate purpose of the Disunionists. We
ere sorry our limited space will not permit of our
copying it in full.
Mr. Spratt is bold to say that the Southern Con-
federacy is q sham and failure if it does not
soouer or later, open its ports to the renewal of
the African slave trade. This il not question of
expediency merely, but of cardinal principle
Slavery, he says, is rapidly dying out all over the
border States. Emigration and the superior VIZ
talty of the white class has almost redeemed
Virginia, Maryland, Tennessee, Kentucky, North
Carolina and Missouri from bondage. Even in
South Carolina itself the hold Of slavery is very
insecure; the negroes are draining off to the far
West; the proprietors find better investments
for that kind Of property; and in the course Of
time, unless the depreciation is arrested, the slave
system will be crowded down into the few and
inconsiderable Gulf States. Then, too, It will
perish Of inanition, IL not recruited from the life
giving springs of Africa.
Mr.. Spratt fully adopts the view of our polti.
cal contests which has long been taken by philo-
sophie observers, and which, when it descended
to the sphere Of the politicians was happily cha
racterizcd by Mr.. Seward as the "irrepressible
conflict" Our divisions of parties, he says are
not geographical, but arise from fundamental
difference in the forms Of our societies. Free la
Dor and bond labor are struggling for the mastery
of the government and the continent Free la
Dor, because of the advantages Of foreign emf
grafton, has thus far carried the day, and it vii!
triumph altogether, unless the South is wise
enough to open the commerce in men. To pro.
hibit the African slave trade, as the new Consti-
tuition does, 10 the extreme of infatuation and
folly. 1t is to strike the whole South beneath
the feet of their triumphant conquerors of the
North. Democracy and slavery can never live
together; either the one or the other must 20 to
the wall; and It viii be slavery beyond doubt
unless the perennial sources of it in Congo and
Dahomey are kept Enclosed.
One must admire the frankness with which the
South Carolina leader declares his case, and his
audacity even in denouncing revolution against
the new confederacy. We have not overturned
the old government, he says, to enable US to per.
feet our system Of society, to inaugurate in the
world genuine slave republic, and unless vel have
done %, unless we have cut loose of free society
altogether, or of that mongrel condition which
exists in the Border States another revolution is
necessary-a revolution not bloodless, perhaps,
like the one through which we have Just passed,
but involved in all the horrors of Southern ci
vii war. Determined, unrelenting, almost fana.
tical in their zeal, these slave.masters will no
more regard the rights of the South, when they
are obstacles in the way Of their favorite pro-
jects, than they have heretofore regarded the
rights Of the North. Holding the sentiments
which would prohibit the slave trade as bi. of
sickly sentimentality, they accuse the authors of
the attempt of pandering to the morbid con.
science and the false humanity Of the modern
civilized world. They are ready to take up arms
against all who give in to the moral weakness, or
who falter in the execution of the ultimate ends
of the revolt
IL The astounding villainy Of the Secession
leaders is we'll shown in Louisiana. The Con-
yention Of that State not only refused to submit
to the people the Constitution Of the "Confed- |
crate States" but refused even to consider a
proposition for laying before it official returns
Of the election fer delegates. The N. o. Plea
yune has said, for some time, that these official
returns were willfully withheld from the people.
and that all efforts 70 obtain them had been and
would be, unsuccessful; the paper named has
been chargcd with stirring up strife BY such
words, and the statements have been declared
by rabid Secession journals to be false Now.
however, the Picayune points with triumph to
the vote by which the Convention forbade the
people 10 know the official and true result Of
their own voting. The truth is, Louisiana new
er voted for Secession, and the leaders know it.
Knowing II, they dare not expose the figures
which would convince them of grossest false.
hood and fraud, and they therefore prefer to
take the undemocratie alternative of refusing