cture
of Southern life which ought to have a wide reading, in _Kate Beaumont_,
a story of South Carolina, written by J. W. De Forest, a Northerner and
a Union soldier. Its tone is sympathetic, and neither the negro nor the
sectional question plays a part. It portrays admirable and delightful
people; old Judge Kershaw is indeed "the white rose of South Carolina
chivalry," and the Beaumonts and McAllisters, with all their foibles,
are a strong and lovable group. But the pistol is the ready arbiter of
every quarrel; the duelist's code is so established that it can hardly
be ignored even by one who disapproves it; and the high-toned gentleman
is no whit too high for the street encounter with his opponent. Old-time
Southerners know how faithful is that picture. So, too, the Southern
people turned readily to public war. They supplied the pioneers who
colonized Texas and won by arms its independence of Mexico. They not
only supported the Mexican war by their votes, but many of the flower
of their youth enlisted for it. From their young men were recruited the
"filibusters" who, from time to time, tried to revolutionize or annex
Cuba or some Central American State. The soldier figured largely in the
Southern imagination. But the North inclined strongly to the ways of
peace. That is the natural temper of an industrial democracy. It is the
note of a civilization advanced beyond slavery and feudalism. And of the
moral leaders of the North, some of the foremost had been strong
champions of peace. Channing had pleaded for it as eloquently as he
pleaded for freedom. Intemperance, slavery, and war had been the trinity
of evil assailed by earnest reformers. Sumner had gone to the length of
proclaiming the most unjust peace better than the justest war,--an
extreme from which he was destined to be converted. Garrison and
Phillips, while their language fanned the passions whose inevitable
tendency is toward war, had in theory declared all warfare to be
unchristian. And, apart from sentiment or conviction, the industrial and
peaceful habit was so widely diffused that it was questionable how much
remained of the militant temper which can and will fight on good
occasion. The South rashly believed that such temper was extinct in the
North, and the North on its part doubted how far the vaunts of Southern
courage had any substance.

CHAPTER XXIII

WHY THEY FOUGHT

Now, when the issue was about to be joined, let it be noted that
Seces