never doing him
any harm. What they would have done, had Government been able to send a
strong force to their assistance at the beginning of the war, we cannot
undertake to say; but they have done little to aid the Federal cause in
the field, while their influence in the Federal councils has been more
prejudicial to the country than the open exertions of the Secessionists
to effect the nation's destruction.

Of these parties, the first had every reason to believe that it could
soon regain possession of Congress, and that in 1864 it would be able to
elect its candidate to the Presidency. Hence it had no wish to dissolve
the Union; and if its leaders could have had their way, the Union would
have been spared. But the second party, making up for its deficiency in
numbers by the intensity of its zeal, and laboring untiringly, was too
much for the moderates. Hate is a stronger feeling than love of any
kind, stronger even than love of spoils; and the men who followed Rhett
and Yancey, Pryor and Spratt, hated the Union with a perfect hatred.
They got ahead of the men who followed Davis and Stephens, and the rest
of those Southern chiefs who would have been content with the complete
triumph of Southern principles in the Republic as it stood in 1860. As
they broke up the Democratic party in order to render the election
of the Republican candidate certain, so that they might found on his
election the _cri de guerre_ of a "sectional triumph" over the South, so
they "coerced" the Southern people into the adoption of a war-policy. We
have more than once heard Mr. Lincoln blamed for "precipitating matters"
in April, 1861. He should have temporized, it has been said, and so
have preserved peace; but when he called for seventy-five thousand
volunteers, he made war unavoidable. The truth is, that Mr. Lincoln did
not begin the war. It was begun by the South. His call for volunteers
was the consequence of war being made on the nation, and not the cause
of war being made either on the South or by the South. The enemy fired
upon and took Fort Sumter before the first call for volunteers was
issued; and that proceeding must be admitted to have been an act of war,
unless we are prepared to admit that there is a right of Secession.
And Fort Sumter was fired upon and taken through the influence of the
violent party at the South, who were resolved that there should be war.
They knew that it was beyond the power of the Federal Government to send