might sweep
every abolitionist in the country into Massachusetts Bay; but they'll
not be able to do it. The Union has cost the Northern people so much
blood and treasure that they will not permit it to be destroyed."

"I reckon the South had about as much to do with the war of the
Revolution as the North did," declared Rodney.

"And another thing, the Northern people will not fight," Mrs. Gray
hastened to add. "Wasn't it the South that did the most toward whipping
Mexico?"

"And wasn't it the North that did the most toward whipping England?"
retorted Mr. Gray. "Look here," he added, starting up in his chair when
he saw Rodney and his mother look toward each other with a smile of
disbelief on their faces. "You must have forgotten your history, you
two. During the Revolutionary War the colonies raised two hundred and
thirty-two thousand men to fight England, and of this number the North
raised one hundred and seventy-five thousand, or more than three-fourths
of the whole. Massachusetts gave sixty-eight thousand; Connecticut gave
thirty-two thousand; Pennsylvania twenty-six thousand, and New York
eighteen thousand; while that miserable little South Carolina gave only
six thousand. And yet she has the impudence to talk and act as if she
owned the country. It would have been money in her pocket and ours if
she had been sunk out of sight in the Atlantic before she was made into
a state."

There were three things that surprised Rodney so much that for a minute
or two he could not speak--his father's sentiments, the earnest and
emphatic manner in which he expressed them, and the items of history to
which he had just listened and which were quite new to him, as they may
be to more than one boy who reads this story. But Mr. Gray was like a
good many other men in the South. He did not believe in disunion
(although he did believe in State Rights), but now that the South was
fully committed to it, he knew that he must do what he could to make the
attempt at separation successful. If it failed, he and every other
slave-holder in the South would be financially ruined.

"Then I suppose you don't want me to go into the army?" said Rodney, at
length.

"I didn't say so; I didn't so much as hint at such a thing," replied his
father, hastily.

"But what's the use of enlisting if I am going to get whipped? I don't
see any fun in that."

"Oh, we've got to fight; we have gone too far to back out. We must hold
out until England and F