ding Black the paper he had drawn up, Buchanan begged him to retain
office and to alter the paper as he saw fit. To this Black agreed. The
demand for the surrender of the forts was refused; Anderson was not
ordered back to Moultrie; and for the brief remainder of Buchanan's
administration Black acted as prime minister.

A very powerful section of the Northern democracy, well typified by
their leaders at Washington, had thus emerged from political evasion
on the Northern side. These men, known afterwards as War Democrats,
combined with the Republicans to form the composite Union party which
supported Lincoln. It is significant that Stanton eventually reappeared
in the Cabinet as Lincoln's Secretary of War, and that along with him
appeared another War Democrat, Gideon Welles, Lincoln's Secretary of the
Navy. With them, at last, Douglas, the greatest of all the old Democrats
of the North, took his position. What became of the other factions of
the old Democratic party remains to be told.

While Buchanan, early in the month, was weeping over the pitilessness
of fate, more practical Northerners were grappling with the question
of what was to be done about the situation. In their thoughts they
anticipated a later statesman and realized that they were confronted by
a condition and not by a theory. Secession was at last a reality. Which
course should they take?

What strikes us most forcibly, as we look back upon that day, is the
widespread desire for peace. The abolitionists form a conspicuous
example. Their watchword was "Let the erring sisters go in peace."
Wendell Phillips, their most gifted orator, a master of spoken style at
once simple and melodious, declaimed splendidly against war. Garrison,
in "The Liberator", followed his example. Whittier put the same feeling
into his verse:

They break the links of Union; shall we light The flames of hell to weld
anew the chain On that red anvil where each blow is pain?

Horace Greeley said in an editorial in the "New York Tribune": "If the
cotton states shall decide that they can do better out of the Union
than in it, we shall insist on letting them go in peace. Whenever a
considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out,
we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep them in. We hope
never to live in a republic where one section is pinned to the residue
by bayonets."

The Democrats naturally clung to their traditions, and, even when they
went