the slaveholding oligarchy; in the event of their defeat
by a small majority, the extension of the civil war over the North. Four
years ago we could not be made to believe that Secession was a possible
thing. We admitted that there were Secessionists at the South, but we
could not be made to believe in the possibility of Secession. Even
"South Carolina couldn't be kicked out of the Union," it was commonly
said in the North. There were but few disunionists at the South, almost
everybody said, and almost everybody believed what was said concerning
the state of Southern opinion. In a few weeks we saw, not South Carolina
kicked out of the Union, but South Carolina kicking the Union away from
her. In a few months we saw eleven States take themselves out of the
Union, form themselves into a Confederacy, and raise great armies to
fight against the Union. Yet it is certain that in the month of
November, 1860, there were not twenty thousand resolute disunionists in
all the Slaveholding States, leaving South Carolina and Mississippi
aside,--and not above fifty thousand in all the South, including
Mississippi and South Carolina. How, then, came it to pass that nearly
the whole of the population of the South became Rebels in so short a
time? Because they were under the dominion of their leading men, who
took them from the right road, and conducted them into the slough of
rebellion. Because they were encouraged so to act by the Northern
Democracy as made rebellion inevitable. The Northern Democratic press
and Northern Democratic orators held such language respecting "Southern
rights" as induced even loyal Southrons to suppose that Slavery was to
be openly recognized by the Constitution, and spread over the nation.
The President of the United States, a Northern Democrat, gravely
declared that there existed no right in the Government to coerce a
seceding State, which was all that the most determined Secessionist
could ask. Instead of doing anything to strengthen the position of the
federal Government, the President did all that he could to assist the
Secessionists, and left the country naked to their attacks; and he
parted on the best of terms with those Rebels who left his Cabinet,
where they had long been busy in organizing resistance to Federal
authority. The leaders of the Northern Democracy, far from exhibiting a
loyal spirit, urged the slaveholders to make demands which were at war
with the Constitution and the laws, and which cou