es of leaders, who are
competent and _earnest_ men, and its ultimate object is FREEDOM. It is
quite as secret and wide-spread as the order of the "Knights of the
Golden Circle," the kindred league among the whites.

This latter organization, which was instituted by John C. Calhoun,
William L. Porcher, and others, as far back as 1835, has for its sole
object the dissolution of the Union, and the establishment of a Southern
Empire--Empire is the word, not Confederacy, or Republic; and it was
solely by means of its secret but powerful machinery that the Southern
States were plunged into revolution, in defiance of the will of a
majority of their voting population.

Nearly every man of influence at the South (and many a pretended Union
man at the North) is a member of this organization, and sworn, under the
penalty of assassination, to labor "in season and out of season, by fair
means and by foul, at all times, and all occasions," for the
accomplishment of its object. The blacks are bound together by a similar
oath, and only _bide their time_.

The knowledge of the real state of political affairs which the negroes
have acquired through this organization is astonishingly accurate; their
leaders possess every essential of leadership--except, it may be,
military skill--and they are fully able to cope with the whites.

The negro whom I call Scipio, on the day when Major Anderson evacuated
Fort Moultrie, and before he or I knew of that event, which set all
South Carolina in a blaze, foretold to me the breaking out of this war
in Charleston harbor, and as confidently predicted that it would result
in the freedom of the slaves!

The fact of this organization existing is not positively known (for the
black is more subtle and crafty than any thing human), but it is
suspected by many of the whites, the more moderate of whom are disposed
to ward off the impending blow by some system of gradual
emancipation--declaring all black children born after a certain date
free--or by some other action that will pacify and keep down the slaves.
These persons, however, are but a small minority, and possess no
political power, and the South is rushing blindly on to a catastrophe,
which, if not averted by the action of our government, will make the
horrors of San Domingo and the French Revolution grow pale in history.

I say the action of our government, for with it rests the
responsibility. What the black wants is freedom. Give him that, and h