s, arrogance, assured claims of sufficient
strength, and daring prophecies of success, enough to have made any
cause triumphant, if triumph comes through such means. Still we were
incredulous, perhaps foolishly and culpably so,--but incredulous, and
unintimidated, and confident, none the less. We believed that wise,
forbearing, and temperate measures of the new Administration would
remove all real grievances, dispel all false alarms, and at least leave
open the way to bloodless methods of preserving the Union. Part of our
infatuation consisted in our seeing so plainly the infatuation of the
South, while we did not allow for the lengths of wild and reckless folly
into which it might drive them. We could see most plainly that either
success in their schemes, or failure through a struggle to accomplish
them, would be alike ruinous to them; that no cause standing on the
basis and contemplating the objects recognized by them could possibly
prosper, so long as the throne of heaven had a sovereign seated upon it.
Full as much, then, from our conviction that the South would not insist
upon doing itself such harm as from any fear of what might happen to
us, did we refuse to regard Secession as a fixed fact. At the period of
which we are speaking, there was probably not a single man at the North,
of well-furnished and well-balanced mind--who stood clear in heart
and pocket of all secret or interested bias toward the South--that
deliberately recognized the probability of the dissolution of the Union.
Very few such men will, indeed, recognize that possibility now, except
as they recognize the possibility of the destruction of an edifice of
solid blocks and stately columns by the grinding to powder of each large
mass of the fabric, so that no rebuilding could restore it.

This was the state of mind and feeling with which we, who had so much at
stake and could watch every pulsation of the excitement, contemplated
the aspect of our opening strife. But with the first echo from abroad of
its earliest announcements here came the most positive averments in the
English papers, with scarcely a single exception, that the knell of this
Union had struck. We had fallen asunder, our bond was broken, we had
repudiated our former league or fellowship, and henceforth what had been
a unit was to be two or more fragments, in peaceful or hostile relations
as the case might be, but never again One. It would but revive for us
the first really sharp and i