ere too weak to rise above their prejudices, personal and
political. Some were afraid to go to battle. There was also,
though strangely inconsistent, a very considerable class of the
early Abolitionists of the Garrison-Smith-Phillips school who did
not support the war for the Union, but who preferred the slave-
holding States should secede, and thus perpetuate the institution
of slavery in America--the very thing, on moral grounds, such
Abolitionists had always professed a desire to prevent. They
opposed the preservation of the Union by coercion. They thus laid
themselves open to the charge that they were only opposed to slavery
_in the Union_, leaving it to flourish wherever it might outside
of the Union. This position was not only inconsistent, but
unpatriotic. The persons holding these views gave little or no
moral or other support to the war for the preservation of the
integrity of the Republic.

There were many loyal men in the South, especially in sections where
slavery did not dominate. In the mountain regions of the South,
opposition to secession was the rule, notably in Western Virginia,
Eastern Kentucky, Eastern Tennessee, and Western North Carolina.
There were also loyal men in Northern Alabama and Georgia. But
wherever the determined spirit of the slave-holding disunionists
controlled, as in the cities and more densely populated parts of
the South, though the slave-holding population was even therein
the minority, the white community was forced to array themselves
with the Confederates. There were many South who, at first,
determined to oppose disunion, but who succumbed to the pressure,
under the belief that the Confederacy was an accomplished fact, or
that the North either would not or could not fight successfully,
and would be beaten in battle. Boasts of superiority and the great
display and noisy preparation for war were misleading to those who
only witnessed one side of the pending conflict. The North had,
up to Sumter, been slow to act, and this was not reassuring to the
friends of the Union South, or, perhaps, anywhere. The proneness
of mankind to be on the successful side has shown itself in all
trying times. It is only the virtue of individual obstinacy that
enables the few to go against an unjust popular clamor.

But political party ties North were the hardest to break. Those
who had been led to political success generally by the pro-slavery
politicians of the South could not easil