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of several Northern owners were seized at
Savannah and held as hostages.
This act produced great excitement throughout the country.
The more cautious leaders of the insurgents advised the release of the vessels.
In the mean time a larger portion of the arms seized at New York had been given up, and the little tempest of passion was soon allayed.
Investigations caused by this transaction revealed the fact that the insurgents were largely armed, through the cupidity of Northern merchants and manufacturers, who had made very extensive sales to the agents of the conspirators during the months of December, 1860, and January, February, and March, 1861.
On the 4th of February, John Slidell1 and Judah P. Benjamin, of Louisiana, withdrew from the National Senate they were so dishonoring.
Slidell made a speech which was marked by a cool insolence of manner, an insulting exhibition of contempt for the people of the Free-labor States, and a consciousness of power to do all that, in smooth rhetoric, he threatened.
He spoke as if there would be a peaceable separation, and sketched a line of policy which the new “Confederacy” would pursue.
But, he said, in the event of an attempt of the Government to enforce its laws in so-called seceded States, “you will find us ready to meet you with the outstretched hand of fellowship or in the mailed panoply of war, as you may will it. Elect between these alternatives.”
He then sneeringly referred to the utter failure which the Government would experience in any attempt to assert its
authority over the “seceders.”
“You may,” he said, “under color of enforcing your laws or collecting your revenue, blockade our ports.
This will be war, and we shall meet it with different but equally efficient weapons.
We will not permit the introduction or consumption of any of your manufactures.
Every sea will swarm with our volunteer militia of the ocean, with the striped bunting floating over their heads, for we do not mean to give up that flag without a bloody struggle — it is ours as much as yours
2; and although for a time more stars may shine on your banner, our children, if not we, will rally under a constellation more numerous and more resplendent than yours.
You may smile at this as an impotent boast, at least for the present, if not for the future; but,” he said, with well-pointed irony, “if we need ships and men for privateering, we shall be amply supplied from the same sources as now, almost exclusively, furnish the means for carrying on with unexampled vigor the
African Slavetrade-New York and
New England.
Your mercantile marine,” he added, “must either sail under foreign flags or rot at your wharves.”
With the blind spirit of false prophecy which had taken possession of the
