so many
words part of the American system. This was a price which his
intellectual temper, so elastic in regard to details, but so firm in its
insistence on sound first principles, was not prepared to pay.

The rejection of the Crittenden Compromise gave the signal for the new
and much more formidable secession which marked the New Year. Before
January was spent Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi were, in their own
view, out of the Union. Louisiana and Texas soon followed their example.
In Georgia the Unionists put up a much stronger fight, led by Alexander
Stephens, afterwards Vice-President of the Confederacy. But even there
they were defeated, and the Cotton States now formed a solid phalanx
openly defying the Government at Washington.

The motives of this first considerable secession--for I have pointed out
that the case of South Carolina was unique--are of great importance, for
they involve our whole view of the character of the war which was to
follow. In England there is still a pretty general impression that the
States rose in defence of Slavery. I find a writer so able and generally
reliable as Mr. Alex. M. Thompson of the _Clarion_ giving, in a recent
article, as an example of a just war, "the war waged by the Northern
States to extinguish Slavery." This view is, of course, patently false.
The Northern States waged no war to extinguish Slavery; and, had they
done so, it would not have been a just but a flagrantly unjust war.
No-one could deny for a moment that under the terms of Union the
Southern States had a right to keep their slaves as long as they chose.
If anyone thought such a bargain too immoral to be kept, his proper
place was with Garrison, and his proper programme the repudiation of the
bargain and the consequent disruption of the Union. But the North had
clearly no shadow of right to coerce the Southerners into remaining in
the Union and at the same time to deny them the rights expressly
reserved to them under the Treaty of Union. And of such a grossly
immoral attempt every fair-minded historian must entirely acquit the
victorious section. The Northerners did not go to war to abolish
Slavery. The original basis of the Republican party, its platform of
1860, the resolutions passed by Congress, and the explicit declarations
of Lincoln, both before and after election, all recognize specifically
and without reserve the immunity of Slavery in the Slave States from all
interference by the Federal Govern