ll
the departments, the Supreme Court, army, and navy, for four precious
months. This was improved in inflicting as much damage on the Government
as possible, and organizing a confederacy of revolted States. The people
did not believe they would fight, and offered them various compromises,
_everything except the thing they desired--unlimited power to control
the republic_. The aristocracy knew that no compromises would do them
good which proposed anything less than a reconstruction of the Union
which would insure their perpetual supremacy. They even doubted if this
could be effectually accomplished in a peaceful way. The people must
first be subdued by arms, their Union destroyed, and brought to the
verge of anarchy by this mighty power, backed by the whole despotism of
Europe; then might they be compelled to accept such terms as it chose to
dictate. It waited no longer than was necessary to complete its
preparations, and opened ed its guns in Charleston harbor. When the
smoke of that cannonade drifted away, the people beheld with
consternation the Slave Powers arrayed in arms, from Baltimore and St.
Louis to New Orleans and the Rio Grande, advancing to seize their
capital and overthrow the republic.

Having conquered the aristocracy by its industry, education, religion,
and politics--driven it from every position on the great field of
American society in an era of peace--the people slowly awoke to the
conviction that they must now conquer it on the field of arms. They were
slow to come to that conviction. Their ablest leaders were not
war-statesmen, and did not comprehend at once the full meaning of the
war. They called it a 'conspiracy,' a 'rebellion,' an 'insurrection,' a
'summer madness,' anything but what it was--_the American stave
aristocracy in arms to subdue the people of the United States with every
other aristocracy on earth wishing it success_. But the people did not
refuse the challenge. In April, 1861, they rushed to the capital, saved
their Government from immediate capture or dispersion, and then began to
prepare, after their way, for--they hardly knew what--to suppress a riot
or wage a civil war.

In every such conflict as this the aristocracy has a great advantage,
especially if it can choose its own time to begin the war. Never was an
oligarchy more favored in its preparations than ours. Since 1820 it had
contemplated and prepared for this very hour. It had almost unlimited
control over fifteen Stat