which have entered into the composition of the powers seeking the
destruction of the Federal Government. As for the doctrine of State Rights
as expounded by Calhoun, it is carried beyond the Virginia and Kentucky
resolutions of '98, to that point which renders it destructive of the end
for which it is claimed to be enunciated.

It has been sought to carry the doctrine to that extremity beyond the
exercise of its own reserved powers, which must inevitably bring it in
collision with the legitimate operation of the powers delegated to the
General Government.

With this extreme, hence fallacious, doctrine of State Rights thus firmly
imbedded in the hearts and heads of a zealous people, rendering them, upon
conscientious principles, the ready tools of ambitious leaders, filled
with lust for power and place, it should not be a matter of so much
surprise, that, after years of uninterrupted and persistent education and
training of the generations in their order, that the year of 1860 found
the continent trembling beneath the crack of musketry, the tread of horse,
and the roar of cannon.

As among the more important means used by designing men in aid of the
scheme of rebellion, and the ultimate establishment of a separate
government in the South, the nucleus of which was to be the cotton states,
secret organizations, assuming different names and traditions in different
localities in the South were established, having for their special mission
in the meantime the privacy of the plot, and the education of the people
to that indispensable standard of treason which would eventually lead them
to avow their principles at the point of the sword.

These organizations, in point of antiquity, are traced to a time not long