While Lincoln was pleading the cause of human rights, and asserting that the Declaration of Independence was meant for black as well as white, members of President Buchanan's cabinet, holding in their grasp the reins of National Government, were plotting the nation's overthrow. Even down to the very moment that John B. Floyd left the War Office, and when South Carolina was already in rebellion, this plotting was continued. As late as the beginning of January, 1861, an attempt was made under an order from Floyd to remove one hundred and fifty cannon from the Allegheny Arsenal, at Pittsburg, to the South, to be used against the Union. "Our people are a unit that not a gun shall be shipped South," said the _Dispatch_ of that city, and without violence, without the shedding of a drop of blood or the drawing of a weapon against national authority, the citizens obtained the reversal of the order, and the guns, some of which were already under convoy to the wharf, were returned to the arsenal. The "Rebellion Records," published by the government, should not begin with 1861. They should go back to the time when the plot originated to strip the national arsenals for the benefit of the nation's enemies, to disarm the Union that it might fall a prey to secession. This was the treason which should never be forgotten. The men who fought bravely and openly in the field for the Confederate cause can be respected for their sincerity and honored for their valor; but not so with the men who before the war violated their trust as guardians and armor bearers of the Union to betray the nation to its conspiring foes. * * *