or Douglas might be relied upon in
the supreme crisis as friends of the Union. Two Southern States,
Kentucky and Tennessee, had given popular majorities for Mr. Bell,
and there was no reason for supposing that the Union sentiment of
Tennessee was any less pronounced than that of Kentucky. Indeed,
Tennessee had the advantage of Mr. Bell's citizenship and long
identification with her public service, while Kentucky encountered
the personal influence and wide-spread popularity of Mr. Breckinridge,
who took part against the Union.

If Mr. Bell had taken firm ground for the Union, the Secession
movement would have been to a very great extent paralyzed in the
South. Mr. Badger of North Carolina, of identically similar
principles with Crittenden, could have given direction to the old
Whig sentiment of his State, and could have held it steadily as
Kentucky was held to the Union. The Bell and Everett campaign had
been conducted upon the single and simple platform of the Union
and the Constitution,--devotion to the Union, obedience to the
Constitution. Mr. Everett, whose public life of grace, eloquence,
and purity had not been especially distinguished for courage,
pronounced with zeal and determination in favor of Mr. Lincoln's
administration, and lent his efforts on the stump to the cause of
the Union with wonderful effect through the Northern States. The
eagerness of Virginia Democrats never could have swept their State
into the whirlpool of Secession if the supporters of Mr. Bell in
Tennessee and North Carolina had thrown themselves between the Old
Dominion and the Confederacy. With that aid, the former Whigs of
Virginia, led by Stuart and Botts and Wickham and Baldwin, and
united with the loyal Democrats of the mountain and the valley,
could have held the State firmly to the support of the Union, and
could have effectively nullified the secret understanding between
Mr. Mason and the Montgomery government, that Virginia should secede
as soon as her open co-operation was needed for the success of the
Southern revolt.

THE WHIGS OF THE SOUTH.

A large share of the responsibility for the dangerous development
of the Rebellion must therefore be attributed to John Bell and his
half million Southern supporters, who were all of the old Whig
party. At the critical moment they signally failed to vindicate
the principles upon which they had appealed in the preceding canvass