in the leadership of their masters.

Weak as were the Southern people in point of numbers and political
power, compared with those of the opposite section, the haughty
slaveholders easily persuaded themselves and their dependents that they
could successfully cope in arms with the Northern adversary, whom they
affected to despise for his cowardly and mercenary disposition. Wealth,
education, and ample leisure gave them the best opportunity for
political studies and public employments. Long experience imparted skill
in all the arts of government, and enabled them, by superior ability, to
control the successive administrations at Washington. Proud and
confident, they indulged the belief that their great political prestige
would continue to serve them among their late party associates in the
North, and that the counsels of the adversary would be distracted, and
his power weakened, by the fatal effects of dissension. All warlike
sentiment and capacity was believed to be extinct among the traders and
manufacturers, 'the shopkeepers and pedlars,' of the Middle and Eastern
States. Hence a vigorous attack in arms against the Federal Government
was expected to be met with no energetic and effective resistance. A
peaceable dissolution of the Union, and the impossibility of war--at
least of any serious and prolonged hostilities--was a cardinal point in
the teachings of the secessionists. The fraudulent as well as violent
measures by which they sought to disarm the Federal Government and to
forestall its action, were only adopted 'to make assurance doubly sure.'

Beyond all doubt, the system of slavery encourages those habits and
passions which make the soldier, and which instigate and maintain wars.
The military spirit and that of slavery are congenial; for both belong
to an early stage in the progress of civilization, when each is
necessary to the support and continuance of the other. It was therefore
to be expected that the Southern people would be better prepared for the
organization, and also for the manoeuvring of armies. But the mistake
and the fatal delusion cherished by the conspirators, was the belief
that the Northern people were without manly spirit, and incapable of
being aroused by sentiments of patriotism. It was an equal
miscalculation to anticipate that the fabric of Northern free society
would fall to pieces, and be thrown into irremediable disorder, at the
first appearance of civil commotion. This false idea was t