not only as possible, but actual. They began to
grow insolent, and, while compelling absolute submission to their
rebellious usurpation at home, decried any exercise of legitimate
authority on the part of the General Government as _Coercion_,--a new
term, by which it was sought to be established as a principle of
constitutional law, that it is always the Northern bull that has gored
the Southern ox.

During all this time, the Border Slave States, and especially Virginia,
were playing a part at once cowardly and selfish. They assumed the
right to stand neutral between the government and rebellion, to
contract a kind of morganatic marriage with Treason, by which they
could enjoy the pleasant sin without the tedious responsibility, and to
be traitors in everything but the vulgar contingency of hemp. Doubtless
the aim of the political managers in these States was to keep the North
amused with schemes of arbitration, reconstruction, and whatever other
fine words would serve the purpose of hiding the real issue, till the
new government of Secessia should have so far consolidated itself as to
be able to demand with some show of reason a recognition from foreign
powers, and to render it politic for the United States to consent to
peaceable separation. They counted on the self-interest of England and
the supineness of the North. As to the former, they were not wholly
without justification,--for nearly all the English discussions of the
"American Crisis" which we have seen have shown far more of the
shop-keeping spirit than of interest in the maintenance of free
institutions; but in regard to the latter they made the fatal mistake
of believing our Buchanans, Cushings, and Touceys to be representative
men. They were not aware how utterly the Democratic party had divorced
itself from the moral sense of the Free States, nor had they any
conception of the tremendous recoil of which the long-repressed
convictions, traditions, and instincts of a people are capable.

Never was a nation so in want of a leader; never was it more plain
that, without a head, the people "bluster abroad as beasts," with
plenty of the iron of purpose, but purpose without coherence, and with
no cunning smith of circumstance to edge it with plan and helve it with
direction. What the country was waiting for showed itself in the
universal thrill of satisfaction when Major Anderson took the
extraordinary responsibility of doing his duty. But such was the
general