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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,
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