duty under the protection of his own local
authorities; appropriations for the army and navy could be passed with
the aid of Tennessee and Alabama votes in Congress; and Davis, and
Tyler, and Mason be hung upon the verdict of a jury of the vicinage.

In Virginia, a movement based upon this principle has been already
inaugurated. From Western Virginia, the progress toward Eastern
Tennessee and Northern Alabama is natural and certain. The worst case to
deal with, unquestionably, is South Carolina. Hers is a peculiar
people, and zealous, though scarcely of good works. That fiery little
Commonwealth is remarkably constituted. The State is inhabited
principally by negroes; and the remaining minority may be divided into
two classes,--whites who are dependent upon negroes for a subsistence,
and whites whose chief distinction in life and great consolation is that
they are not negroes. The former and much the smaller class possess all
the wealth, all the cultivation, and all the political power, which
they are enabled to retain by an ingenious and systematic use of the
prejudices and passions of the latter. They are reputed to have much
earnestness of conviction, and claim an unusual amount of gallantry and
courage for their soldiers; though it is noticeable that their principal
exploits in our time have been the seizure of friendless colored
sailors, and selling them into slavery,--the achievement of that knight
of the bludgeon, the representative whose noble deed his constituents
could hardly admire enough, but the better part of whose valor was
the discretion that preferred to encounter his antagonist sitting and
incapable of resistance,--and lastly, that heroic and bloodless victory
at Fort Sumter, where imperishable glory was won by the ten thousand who
conquered the seventy. They seem now to be united, and substantially
unanimous. What elements a little adversity would develop in them, time
must determine. Whether there is any reserve of patriotism and fidelity,
overawed and silenced now, but which will come forth to serve as the
nucleus of reconstruction when it can find protection and security, or
whether we must wait for a new generation to grow up, remains to be
tried. Their leaders are subtle reasoners, and it has been shrewdly
observed of them that "they never shrink from following their logic to
its consequences because the conclusion is _immoral_." Perhaps they will
find no more difficulty in accepting the arguments