l the conflict of principles led to the conflict of forces. The
moral uprising of the North came with the logical precision of destiny;
the rage of the "petty tyrants" was inevitable; the plot to erect a slave
empire followed with fated certainty; and the only question left for us
of the North was, whether we should suffer the cause of the Nation to go
by default, or maintain its existence by the argument of cannon and
musket, of bayonet and sabre.

The war in which we are engaged is for no meanly ambitious or unworthy
purpose. It was primarily, and is to this moment, for the preservation
of our national existence. The first direct movement towards it was a
civil request on the part of certain Southern persons, that the Nation
would commit suicide, without making any unnecessary trouble about it.
It was answered, with sentiments of the highest consideration, that there
were constitutional and other objections to the Nation's laying violent
hands upon itself. It was then requested, in a somewhat peremptory tone,
that the Nation would be so obliging as to abstain from food until the
natural consequences of that proceeding should manifest themselves. All
this was done as between a single State and an isolated fortress; but it
was not South Carolina and Fort Sumter that were talking; it was a vast
conspiracy uttering its menace to a mighty nation; the whole menagerie of
treason was pacing its cages, ready to spring as soon as the doors were
opened; and all that the tigers of rebellion wanted to kindle their wild
natures to frenzy, was the sight of flowing blood.

As if to show how coldly and calmly all this had been calculated
beforehand by the conspirators, to make sure that no absence of malice
aforethought should degrade the grand malignity of settled purpose into
the trivial effervescence of transient passion, the torch which was
literally to launch the first missile, figuratively, to "fire the
southern heart" and light the flame of civil war, was given into the
trembling hand of an old white-headed man, the wretched incendiary whom
history will handcuff in eternal infamy with the temple-burner of ancient
Ephesus. The first gun that spat its iron insult at Fort Sumter, smote
every loyal American full in the face. As when the foul witch used to
torture her miniature image, the person it represented suffered all that
she inflicted on his waxen counterpart, so every buffet that fell on the
smoking fortress was felt