out all this long time, the third part of a year, which statutes
scarcely less venerable than the Constitution itself freely presented to
the disunion leaders, they safely completed their civil and military
organization, while the Northerners, under a ruler whom they had
discredited, but of whom they could not get rid, were paralyzed for all
purposes of counter preparation.

As a trifling compensation for its existence this costly interregnum
presents to later generations a curious spectacle. A volume might be
made of the public utterances put forth in that time by men of familiar
names and more or less high repute, and it would show many of them in
most strange and unexpected characters, so entirely out of keeping with
the years which they had lived before, and the years which they were to
live afterward, that the reader would gaze in hopeless bewilderment. In
the "solid" South, so soon to be a great rebelling unit, he would find
perhaps half of the people opposed to disunion; in the North he would
hear everywhere words of compromise and concession, while coercion would
be mentioned only to be denounced. If these four months were useful in
bringing the men of the North to the fighting point, on the other hand
they gave an indispensable opportunity for proselyting, by whirl and
excitement, great numbers at the South. Even in the autumn of 1860 and
in the Gulf States secession was still so much the scheme of leaders
that there was no popular preponderance in favor of disunion doctrines.
In evidence of this are the responses of governors to a circular letter
of Governor Gist of South Carolina, addressed to them October 5, 1860,
and seeking information as to the feeling among the people. From North
Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, and Alabama came replies that secession
was not likely to be favorably received. Mississippi was non-committal.
Louisiana, Georgia, and Alabama desired a convention of the
discontented States, and might be influenced by its action. North
Carolina, Louisiana, and Alabama would oppose forcible coercion of a
seceding State. Florida alone was rhetorically belligerent. These
reports were discouraging in the ears of the extremist governor; but
against them he could set the fact that the disunionists had the
advantage of being the aggressive, propagandist body, homogeneous, and
pursuing an accurate policy in entire concert. They were willing to take
any amount of pains to manipulate and control the election