war there were
many who did not see Disunion as they now view it, and that their ties
with the South were often of the most brotherly kind. Indeed, when
Secession was first openly agitated, and until Sumter fired the Northern
heart, myriads who would now gladly disown those words were wont to say:
'Well, if they are determined to go, I suppose we must lose them.' Would
Fernando Wood have ever _dared_ at that time to publish a proclamation
recommending the secession of New-York as a free city had there not then
existed a singular apathy, or rather a strange blindness, to the
horrible results which must flow from disunion? In those days the
country _was_ blind--it has seen many an old error and delusion
dispelled since then--unfortunately too many among us have still much to
learn! Let those who still oppose _Emancipation_ remember that a day
will come when they, too, will unavoidably appear as the tories of the
great Revolution now in progress!

Our informant declared that should he write an exposition of the K.G.C.,
it would differ in many respects from that given in the _Journal_,
forgetting apparently, that Mr. Prentice had already explicitly stated
that since the great question of Disunion sprung up, the K.G.C. had
materially changed its character, and must unavoidably, from its very
nature, continue to change and modify details to suit new exigencies.
The whole history of _secret society_, whether in its forms Masonic,
Templar, Illuminee, Carbonari, Philadelphian, or Marianne; whether
universal, political, social, military, or revolutionary, is a history
of modifications of mere detail, compelled by circumstances. The mere
forms of initiation, the Ritual of the Order, pass-words, grips, and
signs, are of comparatively small importance, in fact, they appear
supremely silly; and were it not undoubtedly true that the mass of the
initiated were correspondingly silly, though very wicked, fellows, we
might almost wonder that such rococo nonsense should be deemed essential
to the management of a powerful political organization. The weaker
brethren, unable to penetrate by the strong will and by 'spontaneous
secresy,' to cooeperation with the leaders and to the arcana, have always
required the tomfoolery of ceremony, and among the K.G.C. it has not
been spared. Those desirous of learning what the forms were or are in
which the action of the Order has been enveloped, we refer to pamphlet
itself, premising that, of its kind,