grievance. As, in the
South's view, the case was one of sovereigns one party of whom, without
referee, was about to break a compact without the other's consent, the
adequacy of the grievance should, to excuse the step, have been
absolutely beyond question. On the contrary it was subject to the
gravest question.

The South's only significant indictment against the North was the one
concerning the personal liberty laws. Moderates like Stephens, indeed,
stoutly condemned this plea for secession as insufficient; but,
believing in the State as sovereign, they had perforce to yield, and
they became as enthusiastic as any when once this "paramount authority"
had spoken. "Fire-eaters," at first a small minority, saw this advantage
and worked it to the utmost. On its complaint touching the personal
liberty legislation the South's case utterly broke down, theorizing the
Union into a rope of sand, not "more perfect" but far less so than the
old, which itself was to be "perpetual." According to the Calhoun
contention States were the parties to a pact, and it was a good way from
clear that any northern State as such, even by personal liberty
legislation, had broken the alleged pact. The liberty laws were innocent
at least in form, and at worst had never been endorsed in any state
convention. Buchanan himself testified that the fugitive slave law had
been faithfully executed, and its operation is well known never to have
been resisted by any public authority.

It was suspicious that no State ventured upon secession alone. It was
equally remarkable that the Gulf States were the readiest to go, and
made most of the personal liberty laws as their pretext, accounting this
cry, as was ingenuously confessed, a necessary means for holding the
border States solidly to the southern cause. Weak enough, indeed, was
the complaint of "consolidationist" aggression, of which certainly no
party to the so-called pact was or could have been guilty. But the deeps
of folly were sounded when northern "persecution" of the South was
mentioned, or Lincoln's election as threat of such. This was simply the
election as President, in a perfectly constitutional way, of a citizen,
honest and unambitious, who was pledged against touching slavery in
States. Having become President, he was unable to procure minister, law,
treaty, or even adequate guard for his own person save by the consent of
the party hitherto in power. Lincoln had failed of a popular majority b