in the first place he owed allegiance, and whose orders, as
expressed through her legally constituted government, he was, he felt,
bound in law, in honor, and in love to obey without doubt or
hesitation. This belief was the mainspring that kept the Southern
Confederacy going, as it was also the corner-stone of its
constitution.

In April, 1861, at Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor, the first shot was
fired in a war that was only ended in April, 1865, by the surrender of
General Lee's army at Appomattox Court House, in Virginia. In duration
it is the longest war waged since the great Napoleon's power was
finally crushed at Waterloo. As the heroic struggle of a small
population that was cut off from all outside help, against a great,
populous, and very rich republic, with every market in the world open
to it, and to whom all Europe was a recruiting ground, this secession
war stands out prominently in the history of the world. When the vast
numbers of men put into the field by the Northern States, and the
scale upon which their operations were carried on, are duly
considered, it must be regarded as a war fully equal in magnitude to
the successful invasion of France by Germany in 1870. If the mind be
allowed to speculate on the course that events will take in centuries
to come, as they flow surely on with varying swiftness to the ocean of
the unknown future, the influence which the result of this Confederate
war is bound to exercise upon man's future history will seem very
great. Think of what a power the re-United States will be in another
century! Of what it will be in the twenty-first century of the
Christian era! If, as many believe, China is destined to absorb all
Asia and then to overrun Europe, may it not be in the possible future
that Armageddon, the final contest between heathendom and
Christianity, may be fought out between China and North America? Had
secession been victorious, it is tolerably certain that the United
States would have broken up still further, and instead of the present
magnificent and English-speaking empire, we should now see in its
place a number of small powers with separate interests.

Most certainly it was the existence of slavery in the South that gave
rise to the bitter antagonism of feeling which led to secession. But
it was not to secure emancipation that the North took up arms,
although during the progress of the war Mr. Lincoln proclaimed it, for
the purpose of striking his enemy a ser