e so mad as to go that
length," remarked her husband, fondling his baby daughter as he spoke.
"The North, of course, does not desire a separation; but if the South
goes, will be pretty sure to let her go peaceably."

"I doubt it, Travilla; and even if a peaceable separation should be
allowed at first, so many causes of contention would result (such as the
control of the navigation of the Mississippi, the refusal of the North to
restore runaway negroes, etc., etc.), that it would soon come to blows."

"Horace, you frighten me," said Rose, who had come in while they were
talking.

The color faded from Elsie's cheek, and a shudder ran over her, as she
turned eagerly to hear her husband reply.

"Why cross the bridge before we come to it, Dinsmore?" he answered
cheerily, meeting his wife's anxious look with one so fond and free from
care, that her heart grew light; "surely there'll be no fighting where
there is no yoke of oppression to cast off. There can be no effect
without a cause."

"The accursed lust of power on the part of a few selfish, unprincipled
men, may invent a cause, and for the carrying out of their own ambitious
schemes, they may lead the people to believe and act upon it. No one
proposes to interfere with our institution where it already exists--even
the Republican party has emphatically denied any such intention--yet the
hue and cry has been raised that slavery will be abolished by the incoming
administration, arms put into the hands of the blacks, and a servile
insurrection will bring untold horrors to the hearths and homes of the
South."

"Oh, dreadful, dreadful!" cried Rose.

"But, my dear, there is really no such danger: the men (unscrupulous
politicians) do not believe it themselves; but they want power, and as
they could never succeed in getting the masses to rebel to compass their
selfish ends, they have invented this falsehood and are deceiving the
people with it."

"Don't put all the blame on the one side, Dinsmore," said Mr. Travilla.

"No; that would be very unfair. The framers of our constitution looked to
gradual emancipation to rid us of this blot on our escutcheon, this
palpable inconsistency between our conduct and our political creed.

"It did so in a number of States, and probably would ere this in all, but
for the fierce attacks of a few ultra-abolitionists, who were more zealous
to pull the mote out of their brother's eye than the beam out of their
own, and so exasperated the