e the nations of
Europe that a dissolution of the Union was an absurd impossibility. It
had never entered the mind of any candid statesman in America and should
be dismissed at once by statesmen in Europe. And yet at this time eleven
Southern States, stretching from the James to the Rio Grande, with a
population of eight millions, had by solemn act of their Legislatures
withdrawn from the Union and their armies were camping within a few
miles of the City of Washington.

In all the North not a single statesman or a single newspaper appeared
to have any conception of the serious task before them. The fusillades
of rant, passion and bombast which filled the air would have been comic
but for the grim tragedy which was stalking in their wake.

The "Rebellion" was ridiculed and sneered at in terms that taxed the
genius of the writers for words of contempt.

The New York _Tribune_, the greatest and most powerful organ of public
opinion in the North, a paper which had boldly from the first proclaimed
the right of the South to peaceable secession, was now swept away with
the popular fury.

Its editor gravely declared:

"The Southern rebellion is nothing more or less than the natural
recourse of all mean-spirited and defeated tyrannies to rule or ruin,
making of course a wide distinction between the will and the power, for
the hanging of traitors is soon to begin before a month is over. The
Nations of Europe may rest assured that Jeff Davis and Co. will be
swinging from the battlements at Washington, at least by the fourth of
July. We spit upon a later and longer deferred justice."

The New York _Times_ gave its opinion with equal clearness:

"Let us make quick work. The Rebellion is an unborn tadpole. Let us not
fall into the delusion of mistaking a local commotion for a revolution.
A strong active pull together will do our work in thirty days. We have
only to send a column of twenty-five thousand men across the Potomac to
Richmond to burn out the rats there; another column of twenty-five
thousand to Cairo to seize the Cotton ports of the Mississippi and
retain the remaining twenty-five thousand called for by the President at
Washington--not because there is any need for them there but because we
do not require their services elsewhere."

The staid old Philadelphia _Press_ declared:

"No man of sense can for a moment doubt that all this
much-ado-about-nothing will end in a month. The Northern people are
invincible. Th