so far as to seek to
disseminate these old-fashioned notions among their Southern brethren,
and made annual subscriptions to what was known (alas, that we must
use the historic tense!) as the "Southern Aid Society," having for its
praiseworthy object the support of ministers who should preach the
gospel to our ardent and impulsive neighbors. What a sad and significant
commentary is it upon the ingratitude of depraved human nature, that the
condescending clergyman who whilom consented to collect the offerings
of these discriminating philanthropists is now a chaplain in the
Confederate army, and is invoking the most signal judgments of Heaven
upon his former friends and fellow-laborers!

This, then, was our condition, and these were our habits, when we were
rudely awakened from our dreams of peace by the roar of cannon and the
clash of arms. What wonder that the startling summons found us all
unready for such a crisis? What wonder that our early preparations to
confront the issue thus forced upon us without note of warning were
hasty, incomplete, and quite inadequate to the emergency? Is it
discreditable to us that we were slow to appreciate the bitterness and
intensity of that hatred, which, long smouldering under the surface of
Southern society, burst forth at once into a wide-spread conflagration,
severing like flax all the ties of kindred, and all the bonds of
individual friendship and national intercourse which had united us for
half a century? Here was a section of our Union which had always
enjoyed equal rights with us under the Constitution, and had known the
Government only by its blessings,--nay, more, had actually, by the
confession of its own statesmen, controlled the internal administration
and dictated the foreign policy of the country since the adoption of the
Constitution; which had no substantial grievance to complain of, and
no fanciful injury which could not be readily redressed by legal and
constitutional methods. Are we to be blamed because we could not easily
bring ourselves to believe that an integral part of our nation, with
such a history, could, under a pretence so bald as to insult the common
sense of Christendom, rush headlong into a war which must close all its
avenues of commerce, paralyze all its industry, threaten the existence
of its cherished and peculiar institution,--in a word, whether
successful or unsuccessful, inevitably result in its political suicide?
At this very moment, accustom