ating it at the same time,--the enemies of free
government were striving to persuade the people that the war was an
Abolition crusade. To rebel without reason was proclaimed as one of
the rights of man, while it was carefully kept out of sight that to
suppress rebellion is the first duty of government. All the evils that
have come upon the country have been attributed to the Abolitionists,
though it is hard to see how any party can become permanently powerful
except in one of two ways,--either by the greater truth of its
principles, or the extravagance of the party opposed to it. To fancy
the ship of state, riding safe at her constitutional moorings, suddenly
engulfed by a huge kraken of Abolitionism, rising from unknown depths
and grasping it with slimy tentacles, is to look at the natural history
of the matter with the eyes of Pontoppidan. To believe that the
leaders in the Southern treason feared any danger from Abolitionism
would be to deny them ordinary intelligence, though there can be little
doubt that they made use of it to stir the passions and excite the
fears of their deluded accomplices. They rebelled, not because they
thought slavery weak, but because they believed it strong enough, not
to overthrow the government, but to get possession of it; for it
becomes daily clearer that they used rebellion only as a means of
revolution, and if they got revolution, though not in the shape they
looked for, is the American people to save them from its consequences
at the cost of its own existence? The election of Mr. Lincoln, which
it was clearly in their power to prevent had they wished, was the
occasion merely, and not the cause, of their revolt. Abolitionism,
till within a year or two, was the despised heresy of a few earnest
persons, without political weight enough to carry the election of a
parish constable; and their cardinal principle was disunion, because
they were convinced that within the Union the position of slavery was
impregnable. In spite of the proverb, great effects do not follow from
small causes,--that is, disproportionately small,--but from adequate
causes acting under certain required conditions. To contrast the size
of the oak with that of the parent acorn, as if the poor seed had paid
all costs from its slender strong-box, may serve for a child's wonder;
but the real miracle lies in that divine league which bound all the
forces of nature to the service of the tiny germ in fulfilling its
de