ce between the position which his predecessors prepared for him
and that which he prepared for his successor. Not among the least of
the claims which that successor has upon the profound and respectful
sympathy of all good men everywhere is the fact that there has been no
public utterance of complaining or reproachful words from his lips,
reflecting upon his predecessor, or even asking indulgence on the score
of the shattered and almost wrecked fabric of which we have put him in
charge. We confess that we have looked through the English papers for
months for some magnanimous and high-souled tribute of this sort to the
Man who thus nobly represents a sacred and imperilled cause. If such
tribute has been rendered, it has escaped our notice.

Now, as we are reflecting upon the tone and spirit of the English press
at the opening of the Rebellion, we have to recall to the minds of our
readers the fact, that in all its early stages, even down to and almost
after the proclamation of the President summoning a volunteer force to
resist it, we ourselves, at the North, utterly refused to consider the
Seceders as in earnest. We may have been stupid, besotted, infatuated
even, in our blindness and incredulity. But none the less did we, that
is, the great majority of us, regard all the threats and measures of the
South as something less formidable and actual than open war and probable
or threatening revolution. We were persuaded that the people of the
South had been wrought up by artful and ambitious leaders to wild alarm
that the new Administration would visit outrages upon them and try to
turn them into a state of vassalage. Utterly unconscious as we were of
any purpose to trespass upon or reduce their fullest constitutional
rights, we knew how grossly our intentions were misrepresented to them.
We applied the same measure to the distance between their threats and
the probability that they would carry them out which we knew ought to be
applied to the difference between our supposed and our real
intentions. In a word,--for this is the simple truth,--we regarded the
manifestations of the seceding and rebelling States--or rather of the
leaders and their followers in them--as in part bluster and in part a
warning of what might ensue, though it would not be likely to ensue when
their eyes were open to the truth. We were met by bold defiance, by
outrageous abuse, and with an almost overwhelming venting of falsehoods.
There was boastfulnes