beneficent agencies, it was to be
expected that the protest of Northern manhood and womanhood would grow
louder and stronger until 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 repres