ballot in some of the States by military orders; the proclamation of negro emancipation by the President, by which the domestic institutions and the whole social organism of the Southern States are sought to be disrupted; the elevation and enrollment of negroes into the hitherto proud armies of the Republic; the open declaration of the totally changed and plainly unconstitutional objects of the horrid war that now appalls every heart; the undoubted and inevitable tendency of every utterance and every act of the bad men now in power to break down the safeguards of the States and to consolidate all the great powers of the nation including the reserved rights of States and people, into one grand, all-pervading, all-powerful, centralized despotism; the rapidly prevailing and already widely extended spirit of corruption, demoralization, and licentiousness; the recent written declaration of the President that the "military necessities" of the Government, as seen and interpreted by him as the supreme head of the State, form entirely irrespective of the Constitution, the only limitations of Federal power; these, all, these, and more than these, give evidence, which must not be overlooked, of the truth of our declarations, the reality of our fears, the portentous perils of the present period.

The power which has done these things - "all these and more than these" - is by every just definition, by every conceived notion and complete idea, a despotism, and is so regarded by all just men on other continents - a despotism whose power is usurped, not granted by constitution nor conceded by ordinance, but open, proclaimed, unblushing usurpation, which has become so bold, through impunity, that it has cast off the flimsy trickeries for concealment in which it capered for a time before the footlights, and stands in the astonished gaze of the civilized earth at once a spectacle and a sure evidence of the extinct splendor of the American Union. Brothers! Again renew your solemn vows! Swear at your hearthstones, at the altars consecrated to your household gods! Swear in the holy sanctuary where your fathers worshiped, at their tombs and by their sacred memories--

That I will at all times, if need be, take up arms in the cause of the oppressed, in my own country first of all, against any monarch, prince, potentate, power, or government usurped, which may be found in arms and waging war against a people or peoples who are endeavoring to establish, or have inaugurated, a government for themselves, of their own free choice, in accordance with and founded upon the eternal principles of truth! this I do promise, without regard to the name, station, or destination of the invading power, whether it shall arise within or come from without.

Again:

that I will never take up arms in behalf of any monarch, prince, or government which does not recognize the sole authority of power to be the will of the governed, expressly and distinctly declared, nor in any cause or service as a mercenary.

Thus have you sworn at the altars of our order, in the presence of God and the brothers assembled. The time is near when those vows must be redeemed. The despotism which has crushed us under its iron heel so long is the " government usurped," which is "found in arms and waging war against" our noble States, and would degrade them from sovereignties to them mean condition of dependencies of a centralized power; and its purpose regards all the States which formed the late mighty Republic, alike North and South. It is none the less a "government usurped" because of the fact that the wicked men who wield its mighty powers and direct its energies against the liberties of the people were chosen and elected to the high places of the Republic to administer the Government thereof by all the formulas prescribed by the Constitution. Since they have, in the wantonness of their lust for power, utterly disregarded every requirement and behest of that sacred instrument, nor have ever looked to it for sanction of any act of theirs, but always referring for which they were alone to judge, and which necessity itself they have ever, and with fell purpose too poorly disguised, projected and created. Instances are many and need not be specifically named,