The Appeal saw fit to accompany this letter by the comment that, “after the Confederates should have thrashed the hireling hordes of New York into a proper appreciation of Southern rights, Stewart and his Black Republican comrades may feel inclined to come down South on a collecting tour. If so, they will be quite warmly received.” The consummation of the War anticipated by The Appeal not having, thus far, been attained, it is presumed that the “collecting tour” has not yet been undertaken; hence, Memphis has thus far been constrained to restrict her amiable demonstrations to negroes. VII. while the outbreak and early stages of the Rebellion were signalized by conspicuous exhibitions not only of the blackest treachery but of amazing imbecility on the part of certain officers then serving in our Army or Navy, these were relieved by instances of heroic devotion to the Union and its flag which were the more admirable because passive, and thus unnoted and unknown. Among these may be reckoned the preservation to the Union of Fort McHenry, at Baltimore, by Capt. [since, Maj.-Gen.] John C. Robinson, 5th infantry, who, with a handful of men, held that important position during the four weeks which separated the bloody triumph of the Rebel mob in the slaughter of the Massachusetts men (April 19, 1861) from the bloodless recovery of Baltimore by Gen. Butler, May 13. Had the fort, with its arms and munitions, been given up by its defenders, its repossession, with that of Baltimore, could only have been secured by a lavish outlay of effort and of blood on the part of the Union. VIII. it is the author's well known conviction that Disunion was not purposed by the great body of those who originally favored Secession. They went into the movement, not to divide the country, but to obtain new guaranties and advantages for Slavery throughout the whole of it. The following dispatch to the New York Herald of Dec. 20, 1860, tends to strengthen this conviction:
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party from its formation and were accounted conservatives, though they disclaimed partisanship, who, from the hour of the first tidings of the bombardment of Fort Sumter by the Confederates, consecrated all they had to the maintenance of the Union.
This class is fitly represented by the eminent New York merchant, A. T. Stewart, who acted throughout in the spirit evinced in the following business letter, which, unexpectedly to the writer, first reached the public through the [Rebel] Memphis Appeal:
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