The False Prophet Unveiled.
We confess we are not surprised at the sudden unveiling of the
False Prophet at
Washington.
We thought we knew the man and his retainers.
The moral and intellectual structure of that breed of dogs has been our study and entertainment from early youth.
No branch of natural history has ever given us such exquisite and varied satisfaction as the investigation of the peculiarities, prejudices, passions, and, above all, the magnificent secretiveness of the
Puritan family.
We have long ago satisfied ourselves that the distinctive defects and vices of this chosen race, this elect of the nations, this peculiar people, had become in wrought into their physical organization, so that they were transmitted from parent to child for generations, like any other disease that flesh is heir to. In their business transactions, in their social intercourse, in their virtues and their vices, their pervading and eternal reserve and secrecy are never for one moment forgotten.
Nothing but the great Day of Judgment can ever lay bare their hearts to any eye but their own, and no turtle caught without its shell and set upon and devoured by its unscrupulous companions, ever suffered such tortures as those lovers of darkness will endure when, at the last day, their secretive souls are drawn out of their shells, and exposed with all their plots, treasons and stratagems, to an assembled universe.
From the very beginning of these troubles,
Abraham Lincoln has shown that of all the secret and reticent men of the
Yankee race he was the most reserved and taciturn.
A great faculty this, if exercised in a good cause, and infinitely more respectable than the loquacious weaknesses of a garrulous generation.
But, then, if exercised against your friends; if, whilst your unarmed neighbor is trusting to your professions of peace and friendship you cover with this mantle of reticence an intention to fire his house and cut his throat, it becomes a quality not much to be reverenced.
There has been but one man in the present century who has equalled
Abraham Lincoln in the combined secretiveness, hypocrisy, and diabolism of his character.--The name of this man was
Williams, and he flourished in
London about the year 1808. --Whoever will read "Three Remarkable Murders," by
De Quincey, will find the most mysterious and remorseless murderer of the nineteenth century the exact counterpart of
Abraham Lincoln. This man was so civil in his demeanor that if, by chance, in passing through the street, the professional instrument which he carried under his cloak brushed against a passer-by, he would stop and apologize for the accident; and yet, so purely devilish in his heart that when he had silently entered a tavern in quest of a victim, his evil passions gave such an infernal expression to his face that the poor wretch, whose blood he sought, without knowing who he was or what he wanted, felt she was doomed, and, dropping down upon her knees, the involuntary exclamation was wrung from her lips, "Lord God, have mercy on me."
But it is doing great injustice to this eminent "artist," as
De Quincey calls him, to liken the murderer of a few families to
Abraham Lincoln, or any of his Cabinet.
Williams may have had the genius of
Lincoln, and possibly the thirst for blood; but he never had the opportunity.
Here is this man, professing for months to desire a peaceful solution of existing difficulties, deliberately, persistently, with malice aforethought, cajoling the friendly, credulous Virginia Convention, till he has made them believe he did not intend coercion, he did not intend to seize the
Southern ports; he did not intend to collect the public revenue, and that all his thoughts were bent on peace.
Thus has he tolled them on, and kept them believing, waiting and hoping, as betrayed maidens are allured to believe and wait and hope, until at last he is ready for blood, and we are — where?
Yes, where?
At his feet!
At his mercy!
In all
Virginia, not one fort — not one redoubt — not one earthwork — every fort and arsenal in the hands of the
Government — divided among ourselves by bitter feuds, and seventy-five thousand men gathering in the
Northern States to sweep down in an avalanche upon our unprotected homes and firesides!
The man
Lincoln, for months, aye, from the moment of his election, has been rolling as a sweet morsel under his tongue, the plot which is now beginning to develop itself at last to the horror of the most credulous.
He is a fanatic; a vulgar fanatic of the
Tribune stamp, four of whose editors he has appointed to foreign missions; a fanatic of the
Independent stamp, which paper is his pet of all the Abolition papers, and is regarded in his house as a family bible.
John Brown himself did not hate the
South with a more deadly hatred, nor keep more secret his infernal plan.
The animus of the whole Cabinet may be gathered from a reply made by
Chase to a question of a Kentucky gentleman. "Sir," said
Chase, "we care nothing for the negro, but we hate his master." The purpose of these men is wholesale murder and massacre; we are to be invaded with fire and sword; the horrors of servile war, if possible, are to be added to those of civil war; our fields are to be laid waste, our houses destroyed, and if we resist, we are to be shot down or hung as rebels and traitors.
Such is the programme which
Lincoln has been secretly meditating, whilst inducing the friends of Union in the
South to believe that he was for peace, and therefore to wait, and leave their forts in his hands, and make no preparations to defend their homes, their wives and children and their household gods, and to denounce as agitators and incendiaries every one who raised a warning voice to put the people on their guard and waken them to prepare for the coming war.
Such preparation would have averted that war. A common Union of the
South would have saved the
South from that gigantic tribulation which is now impending over her head.
It is too late now. The procrastinators, in their credulity and prejudice, have left us on the eve of such calamities as this Continent has never seen.
For the whole Southern race, men, women and children will die, before
Abraham Lincoln shall be master of the
Southern States.
