tle-cry,--"States' Rights, and
death to those who make war upon them!" About the same time, we
remember, there was a paragraph going the rounds of the newspapers
which related a conversation said to have taken place between a
Northern man and a Southern boy. The boy happening to use the word
"country," the Northerner asked him, "What is your country?" To which
the boy instantly and haughtily replied, "SOUTH CAROLINA!"

Such anecdotes as these were to most of us here at the North a
revelation. The majority of the Northern people actually did not know
of the _existence_ of such a feeling as that expressed by the Carolina
boy, nor of the doctrine enunciated by the dying soldier. If every boy
in the Northern States old enough to understand the question had been
asked, What is your country? every one of them, without a moment's
hesitation, would have quietly answered in substance thus: "Why, the
United States, of course";--and the only feeling excited by the
question would have been one of surprise that it should have been
asked. And with regard to that "battle-cry" of States' Rights, seven
tenths of the voters of the North hardly knew what a Southern man
meant when he pronounced the words. Thus we presented to the world the
curious spectacle of a people so ignorant of one another, so little
homogeneous, that nearly all on one side of an imaginary line were
willing to risk their lives for an idea which the inhabitants on the
other side of the line not only did not entertain, but knew nothing
about. We observe something similar in the British empire. The
ordinary Englishman does not know what it is of which Ireland
complains, and if an Irishman is asked the name of his country, he
does not pronounce any of the names which imply the merging of his
native isle in the realm of Britain.

Few of us, even now, have a "realizing sense," as it is called, of the
strength of the States' Rights feeling among the Southern people. Of
all the Southern States in which we ever sojourned, the one that
seemed to us most like a Northern State was North Carolina. We stayed
some time at Raleigh, ten years ago, during the session of the
Legislature, and we were struck with the large number of reasonable,
intelligent, upright men who were members of that body. Of course, we
expected to find Southern men all mad on one topic; but in the
Legislature of North Carolina there were several individuals who could
converse even on that in a rational and c