to fight for the Union, but none of any consequence who
doubted that it was constitutionally correct; and there were in the South
men who insisted that no occasion to secede had arisen, but these very
men, when outvoted in their States, maintained most passionately the
absolute right of secession.

The two sides contended for two contrary doctrines of constitutional law.
It is natural when parties are disputing over a question of political
wisdom and of moral right that each should claim for its contention if
possible the sanction of acknowledged legal principle. So it was with
the parties to the English Civil War, and the tendency to regard matters
from a legal point of view is to this day deeply engrained in the mental
habits of America. But North and South were really divided by something
other than legal opinion, a difference in the objects to which their
feelings of loyalty and patriotism were directed. This difference found
apt expression in the Cabinet of President Buchanan, who of course
remained in office between the election of Lincoln in November and his
inauguration in March. General Cass of Michigan had formerly stood for
the Presidency with the support of the South, and he held Cabinet office
now as a sympathiser with the South upon slavery, but he was a
Northerner. "I see how it is," he said to two of his colleagues; "you
are a Virginian, and you are a South Carolinian; I am not a Michigander,
I am an American."

In a former chapter the creation of the Union and the beginnings of a
common national life have been traced in outline. Obstacles to the Union
had existed both in the North and in the South, and, after it had been
carried, the tendency to threaten disruption upon some slight conflict of
interest had shown itself in each. But a proud sense of single
nationality had soon become prevalent in both, and in the North nothing
whatever had happened to set back this growth, for the idea which Lowell
had once attributed to his Hosea Biglow of abjuring Union with slave
owners was a negligible force. Undivided allegiance to the Union was the
natural sentiment of citizens of Ohio or Wisconsin, States created by the
authority of the Union out of the common dominion of the Union. It had
become, if anything, more deeply engrained in the original States of the
North, for their predominant occupation in commerce would tend in this
particular to give them larger views. The pride of a Boston man in the
Co