The alternate title of this book is “The Crisis”. It was first published in 1855 by G.D. Miller, 168 years ago. The problems it talks about in America continue to this very day and are worse than ever!

Unfortunately I can”t find any information about the author, J. Wayne Laurens. I like to stick with well-known authors, but because the information and insights that Laurens submits are similar to other authors I do know, I felt led to post his book on my website. And it is not a mere copy from other websites, it is text converted from a PDF file to HTML webpage format which is easy to read from any size screen. And you can even have your text to voice app read it for you.

There is an amazing statement made about American politics at the beginning of chapter one. If you accept it like I do, you will understand something about politics that most Americans cannot see and do not know. And you will understand why America has become what it has become.

I could expound much more on this point here but it could be interpreted as me merely giving my opinion, and who cares about what I think? Only some of my closest friends do. I’d rather let you, the reader, form your own opinions by sharing with you information from sources much more learned than I am.

PREFACE.

The most remarkable of all the circumstances, Which distinguish our own country from others, is its rapid growth. In the beginning of the seventeenth century it was a wilderness, inhabited only by savages and wild beasts. In the middle of the nineteenth, it rivals the oldest and proudest nations of the world in population, wealth, intelligence and industry. When the territory of the United States was first trodden by the settlers of Virginia, England, France and Germany could boast centuries upon centuries of cultivation, with some little knowledge of civil and religious freedom. Since that period America has shown the birth, childhood, youth and manhood of a model republic, which Europe has repeatedly but vainly endeavored to copy.

All this implies rapid progress. Our country has been aptly called the “country of progress.” It is also, as a necessary consequence, the theatre of sudden changes. Hence many enactments which were politic and just in the infancy of the republic, are pernicious and unjust at the present time. Among these are the laws, totally different from those of any other civilized nation, which give to foreigners, after a very short residence, the rights of citizenship.

When the country was just redeemed from the Revolution, such laws seemed politic and were comparatively harmless. Now they are portentous and dangerous. They are rapidly filling the country with powerful and unscrupulous enemies to her prosperity and her excellent institutions, on which that prosperity is founded.

These enemies, not content to enjoy peace security and equal rights of citizenship, under our constitution and laws, are boldly conspiring to subvert our most revered institutions, to change our laws, to destroy our liberties and to bring the whole country into a state of civil, as they already have, of financial dependance on foreign countries. These enemies are spread over the whole land, but they abound chiefly in cities.

There they can most conveniently plot mischief and set its elements in motion. There they can more readily communicate with the foreign powers, which they represent. There they can more easily accumulate the military force and the arms which may hereafter he required for their purposes. Hence it is in cities that the new importations of foreign enemies to the republic choose for the most part to reside. What are their real character and their secret designs, we have endeavored in the following pages to show; as well as to indicate the means by which their increase may be prevented; and the unholy designs, which they entertain, defeated.

It will be perceived that the enemies of whose existence and power, we have endeavored in this volume to warn our readers, are not merely those who reside among us. On the contrary the ramifications of the grand conspiracy against American liberty and happiness, are spread over many nations and countries. The money, the agents, the spies, of those who are secretly endeavoring to subvert our institutions are here in our midst. How they pursue their designs and how those designs may be defeated, we have endeavored to show in the following pages.

Of the great importance and interest of the subject of which we have treated there can be but one opinion among Americans. With respect to the manner, in which we have treated it, our readers will judge for themselves.

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