May 23, 1861. |
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| Tail-piece — Light extinguished. |
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were rapidly growing upon the hills around it. And yet the conspirators still dreamed of possessing it. Two days after their Convention at Montgomery adjourned to meet in Richmond on the 20th of July, Alexander H. Stephens, in a speech at Atlanta,
in Georgia, after referring to the occupation of the National edifices at Washington by the soldiery, said:--“Their filthy spoliation of the public buildings and the works of art at the Capitol, and their preparations to destroy them, are strong evidences to my mind that they do not intend to hold or defend that place, but to abandon it, after having despoiled and laid it in ruins.
Let them destroy it, savage-like, if they will.
We will rebuild it. We will make the structures more glorious.
Phenix-like, new and more substantial structures will rise from its ashes.
Planted anew, under the auspices of our superior institutions, it will live and flourish throughout all ages.”
At the beginning of May, by fraud, by violence, and by treachery, the conspirators and their friends had robbed the Government to the amount of forty millions of dollars; put about forty thousand armed men in the field, twenty-five thousand of whom were at that period concentrating in Virginia; sent emissaries abroad, with the name of Commissioners, to seek recognition and aid from foreign powers; commissioned numerous pirates to prey upon the commerce of the United States; extinguished the lights of light-houses and beacons along the coasts of the Slave-labor States, from Hampton Roads to the Rio Grande,1 and enlisted actively in their revolutionary schemes the Governors of thirteen States, and large numbers of leading politicians in other States.
Insurrection had become rebellion; and the loyal people of the country, and the National Government, beginning to comprehend the magnitude and potency of the movement, accepted it as such, and addressed themselves earnestly to the task of its suppression.
1 The light-houses and beacons seized, and lights extinguished, commencing with that on Cape Henry, in Virginia, and ending with Point Isabel, in Texas, numbered one hundred and thirty-one. Of these, thirteen were in Virginia, twenty-seven in North Carolina, fourteen in South Carolina, thirteen in Georgia, eighteen in Florida, eight in Alabama, twenty-four in Louisiana, and fourteen in Texas.
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