came, when taxation fell
upon them with a great blow, when the war took a turn that necessitated
imagination for its understanding and faith for its pursuit, these
people with childlike simplicity immediately became panic-stricken.
Like the similar class in the North, they had measureless faith in talk.
Hence for them, as for Horace Greeley and many another, sprang up the
notion that if only all their sort could be brought together for talk
and talk and yet more talk, the Union could be "reconstructed" just as
it used to be, and the cruel war would end. Before their eyes, as before
Greeley in 1864, danced the fata morgana of a convention of all the
States, talking, talking, talking.

The peace illusion centered in North Carolina, where the people were
as enthusiastic for state sovereignty as were any Southerners. They had
seceded mainly because they felt that this principle had been attacked.
Having themselves little if any intention to promote slavery, they
nevertheless were prompt to resent interference with the system or with
any other Southern institution. Jonathan Worth said that they looked on
both abolition and secession as children of the devil, and he put the
responsibility for the secession of his State wholly upon Lincoln
and his attempt to coerce the lower South. This attitude was probably
characteristic of all classes in North Carolina. There also an unusually
large percentage of men lacked education and knowledge of the world. We
have seen how the first experience with taxation produced instant and
violent reaction. The peasant farmers of the western counties and the
general mass of the people began to distrust the planter class. They
began asking if their allies, the other States, were controlled by that
same class which seemed to be crushing them by the exaction of tithes.
And then the popular cry was raised: Was there after all anything in the
war for the masses in North Carolina? Had they left the frying-pan for
the fire? Could they better things by withdrawing from association with
their present allies and going back alone into the Union? The delusion
that they could do so whenever they pleased and on the old footing
seems to have been widespread. One of their catch phrases was "the
Constitution as it is and the Union as it was." Throughout 1863, when
the agitation against tithes was growing every day, the "conservatives"
of North Carolina, as their leaders named them, were drawing together
in a defi