whether it was right to
make war for a Union that could not be peaceably maintained. Now it is
seldom possible to state the cause of a war quite candidly in a single
sentence, because as a rule there are on each side people who concur in
the final rupture for somewhat different reasons. But, in this case,
forecasting a conclusion which must be examined in some detail, we can
state the cause of war in a very few sentences. If we ask first what the
South fought for, the answer is: the leaders of the South and the great
mass of the Southern people had a single supreme and all-embracing object
in view, namely, to ensure the permanence and, if need be, the extension
of the slave system; they carried with them, however, a certain number of
Southerners who were opposed or at least averse to slavery, but who
thought that the right of their States to leave the Union or remain in it
as they chose must be maintained. If we ask what the North fought for,
the answer is: A majority, by no means overwhelming, of the Northern
people refused to purchase the adhesion of the South by conniving at any
further extension of slavery, and an overwhelming majority refused to let
the South dissolve the Union for slavery or for any other cause.

The issue about slavery, then, became merged in another issue, concerning
the Union, which had so far remained in the background.

The first thing that must be grasped about it is the total difference of
view which now existed between North and South in regard to the very
nature of their connection. The divergence had taken place so completely
and in the main so quietly that each side now realised with surprise and
indignation that the other held an opposite opinion. In the North the
Union was regarded as constituting a permanent and unquestionable
national unity from which it was flat rebellion for a State or any other
combination of persons to secede. In the South the Union appeared merely
as a peculiarly venerable treaty of alliance, of which the dissolution
would be very painful, but which left each State a sovereign body with an
indefeasible right to secede if in the last resort it judged that the
painful necessity had come. In a few border States there was division
and doubt on this subject, a fact which must have helped to hide from
each side the true strength of opinion on the other. But, setting aside
these border States, there were in the North some who doubted whether it
was expedient