he patriotism of Major Anderson, and how fully he sympathized
with me as to the evils which then lowered over the country.

In comparing the past and the present among the mighty changes which
passion and sectional hostility have wrought, one is profoundly and
painfully impressed by the extent to which public opinion has drifted
from the landmarks set up by the sages and patriots who formed the
constitutional Union, and observed by those who administered its
government down to the time when war between the States was inaugurated.
Mr. Buchanan, the last President of the old school, would as soon have
thought of aiding in the establishment of a monarchy among us as of
accepting the doctrine of coercing the States into submission to the
will of a majority, in mass, of the people of the United States. When
discussing the question of withdrawing the troops from the port of
Charleston, he yielded a ready assent to the proposition that the
cession of a site for a fort, for purposes of public defense, lapses,
whenever that fort should be employed by the grantee against the State
by which the cession was made, on the familiar principle that any grant
for a specific purpose expires when it ceases to be used for that
purpose. Whether on this or any other ground, if the garrison of Fort
Sumter had been withdrawn in accordance with the spirit of the
Constitution of the United States, from which the power to apply
coercion to a State was deliberately and designedly excluded, and if
this had been distinctly assigned as a reason for its withdrawal, the
honor of the United States Government would have been maintained intact,
and nothing could have operated more powerfully to quiet the
apprehensions and allay the resentment of the people of South Carolina.
The influence which such a measure would have exerted upon the States
which had not yet seceded, but were then contemplating the adoption of
that extreme remedy, would probably have induced further delay; and the
mellowing effect of time, with a realization of the dangers to be
incurred, might have wrought mutual forbearance--if, indeed, anything
could have checked the madness then prevailing among the people of the
Northern States in their thirst for power and forgetfulness of the
duties of federation.

It would have been easy to concede this point. The little garrison of
Fort Sumter served only as a menace; for it was utterly incapable of
holding the fort if attacked, and the poor a