ng the right of any State to withdraw from the national
partnership at its own pleasure. We call on our brethren of the South to
take prompt action for the deliberate, legal and solemn withdrawal of
their States from the Union, and their organization in a new
Confederacy."

So in effect spoke the leading spirits of the Gulf and Cotton States as
soon as Lincoln was elected in November, 1860. Less promptly, coming
only gradually into unison, but with growing clearness and emphasis,
spoke the dominant spirit of the North in the months between Lincoln's
election and inauguration. This in substance was the Northern reply to
the Secessionist:--

"We deny that we have violated the Constitution, that we have wronged
you, or that we intend to wrong you. We have taken no advantage of you
beyond the legitimate victories of political controversy. We are loyal
to the Constitution, and to that which is deeper and higher than the
Constitution,--the spirit of American nationality.

"Taking up your specific charges,--the status of slavery in the various
territories has been debated and battled in Congress and among the
people for seventy years, and as now one decision and now another has
been reached it has been accepted by all until peaceably changed. For
six years past it has been the cardinal question in national politics.
Within that period three views have been urged,--that slavery goes by
natural and constitutional right into all the territories, that the
matter is to be settled in each territory by the local population, and
that slavery should be excluded by national authority from all the
territories. For this last view we have argued, pleaded, waited, until
at last the supreme tribunal of all--the American people in a national
election--has given judgment in our favor.

"You cite the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court as establishing
slavery in the territories. But you wrest from that decision a force
which it does not legally carry. The best lawyers are with us as to
this. The court at the outset dismissed the case for want of
jurisdiction, because Dred Scott, being a negro, could not be an
American citizen, and therefore had no standing before the court. This
being said, the court by its own decision could go no farther with the
case. When a majority of the judges went on to discuss the status of
slavery in the territories,--as it might have come up if they had gone
on to try the case on its merits--they were utteri