The conspiracy is unblushingly confessed by recent parties to it. Especially was this done in the Rebel Convention of South Carolina, where, one after another, the witnesses testified all the same way. Mr. Parker said: “Secession is no spasmodic effort that has come suddenly upon us. _It has been gradually culminating for a long period of thirty years._” Mr. Inglis followed: “Most of us have had this matter under consideration for _the last twenty years_.” Mr. Keitt, Representative in Congress, gloried in his work, saying: “I have been engaged in this movement _ever since I entered political life_.” Mr. Rhett, who was in the Senate when I first entered that body, and did not hesitate then to avow himself a Disunionist, declared in the same Convention: “It is not anything produced by Mr. Lincoln’s election, or by the non-execution of the Fugitive Slave Law: _it is a matter which has been gathering head for thirty years_.”[213] The conspiracy, thus exposed by Jackson, and confessed by recent parties to it, was quickened by the growing passion for Slavery throughout the Slave States. The well-known opinions of the Fathers, the declared convictions of all most valued at the foundation of the Government, and the example of Washington were discarded, and it was recklessly avowed that Slavery is a divine institution, the highest type of civilization, a blessing to master and slave alike, and the very key-stone of our national arch. A generation has grown up with this teaching, so that it is now ready to say with Satan,-- “Evil, be thou my good! by thee at least Divided empire with Heaven’s King I hold; By thee, and more than half perhaps, will reign: As man, erelong, and this new world, shall know.” It is natural that a people thus trained should listen to the voice of conspiracy. Slavery itself is a constant conspiracy; and its supporters, whether in the Slave States or elsewhere, easily become indifferent to all rights and principles by which it may be constrained. This rage for Slavery was quickened by two influences, which have exhibited themselves since the formation of our Union,--one economical, and the other political. The first was the unexpected importance of the cotton crop, which, through the labor of slaves and the genius of a New England inventor, passed into an extraordinary element of wealth and of imagined strength, so that we have all been summoned to homage to cotton as king. The second was the temptation of political power, than which no influence is more potent,--for it became obvious that this could be assured to Slavery only through the permanent preponderance of its representatives in the Senate; so that the continued control of all offices and honors was made to depend upon the extension of Slavery. Thus, through two strong appetites, one for gain and the other for power, was Slavery stimulated; but the conspiracy was strong only through Slavery.