dered, a demand for separation so backed, would be acquiesced in without the effusion of blood; or those who rushed on carnage, to defy and defeat it, would place themselves clearly in the wrong.

"The measures being inaugurated now in the cotton States, with a view to secession, seem to us destitute of gravity and legitimate force. They are the unmistakable evidence of haste, of passion, of distress of the popular judgment. They seem clearly intended to precipitate the South into rebellion before the baselessness of the clamors which have misled and excited her can be ascertained by the great body of her people. We trust that they will be confronted with calmness, with dignity, and with unwavering trust in the inherent strength of the Union and the loyalty of the American people."

Mr. Greeley, although a very well-informed man, a forcible and entertaining writer, who was conducting the most widelyread and circulated newspaper in the country, was, like thousands of many ordinarily well-balanced people, in a state of feverish excitement and uncertainty. Where organizations of all kinds seemed to be going wrong and giving way to disorder and chaos, when Churches, parties, civil and social, and what little military or naval forces we had, seemed to be going to pieces, he got into a fit of useless consternation, and foolishly replied to the secessionists that they might go if they dared.

President Buchanan, with the concurrence of Black, his Attorney-General, and others of his Cabinet, were about declaring, as Mr. Greeley agreed to above, "that a State could not be coerced." This was, in effect, that we had no Nation to save; for if the highest source of power existed in the State, and it could not be compelled to do anything by the Nation, even to the performance of its former voluntary association and allegiance with the other States to make a Nation, then, indeed, we were no more than an unorganized

VOL. II.-37

lot of States, all independent of each other and of the general Government.

The principle provocation to Mr. Greeley's loosely-drawn outbreak of indignation, and his proffer to the South, "Go if you dare," was the taunting arrogance of the South, and thousands of men, North and South, who should have had better sense and certainly more judgment, who boasted "that the North could not exist without the trade, good-will, and favor of the South."

In reply to this flaunting and impudent falsehood, if no more, he, like other independent people, in giving his reasons for writing the "Let-the-Union-slide" declaration, gave perhaps his best reasons about as follows: "The South had been so systematically, so outrageously deluded by demagogues on both sides of the slave-line, with regard to the nature and special importance of the Union to the North, that the Union was habitually represented as an immense boon conferred on the free States by the South, whose withdrawal would overwhelm us all in bankruptcy and ruin; that it might do something toward allaying this Southern inflammation to have it distinctly and plainly set forth that the North had no desire to enforce on the South the maintenance of an abhorred, detested Union."

Accordingly, he wrote his declaration, and slammed in the face of the gathering conspiracy his impulsive blast, daring them to do what they had been preparing to do for years. His paper fusilade, as things turned, led very few astray, if any. It was one that could not be defended on the grounds of law, reason, or expediency, and it was certainly very undignified for a great writer. It was a satisfaction, however, to the organizing South, and increased their belief that the North would not fight, and that there would be little, if any, resistance to their separation.

CHAPTER L.

S we keep pace with these evidences of dissolving par

As

ties, demoralized people, and the general disordered

state of affairs, we must bear in mind our main purpose we have for reciting these items here, some of which are referred to a second time. The difficulties were rising mountain high in the front of Mr. Lincoln when he came to Washington to shape a policy and build a party. For four long months he had to be silent, and could do no more than observe and grieve over the threatened divisions and falling of faithless leaders.

About November, 1860, the New York Herald said: “If, however, Northern fanaticism should triumph over us, and the Southern States should exercise their undeniable right to secede from the Union, then the city of New York, the river counties, the State of New Jersey, and, very likely, Connecticut, will separate from those New England and Western States where the black man is put upon a pinnacle above the white. New York City is for the Union first, and the gallant and chivalrous South afterward."

In accordance with this connivance and agreement to join the conspiracy of this city and surroundings, a dozen or more Northern papers sluiced their war-breeding presses until a stronger hand took the power of the Nation from the palsied hand of Buchanan's pusillanimous Administration. Quailing before the gaunt skeleton of want, distress, and war, they cowardly shrank back from the bloody work they did so much to provoke, and nothing willingly to repress. Under such outspoken disloyalty, Fernando Wood, then mayor

of the city of New York, openly declared for weeks that the city and other surrounding towns and States would go with the South. For this he was not only not punished, but elected to Congress shortly afterward. The Herald, the New York paper referred to, procured one of the first-made Confederate flags for its use; but it never gained even the treasonable right to swing it to the breeze.

Later in the winter again it published a statement as follows: "For less than this, the election of Lincoln, our fathers seceded from Great Britain, and they left revolution organized in every State, to act whenever it is demanded by public opinion. The Confederation is held together only by public opinion. Each State is organized as a complete Government, holding the purse and wielding the sword, possessing the right to break the tie of the Confederation as a nation might break a treaty, and to repel coercion as a nation might repel invasion. Coercion, if it were possible, is out of the question."

In the preliminaries of New York State's adoption of the Constitution, in a letter to Alexander Hamilton, James Madison said:

"MY DEAR SIR,-Yours of yesterday is this instant come to hand, and I have but a few minutes to answer.

"I am sorry that your situation obliges you to listen to propositions of the nature you describe. My opinion is that a reservation of a right to withdraw, if amendments be not decided on under the form of the Constitution within a certain time, is conditional ratification; that it does not make New York a member of the new Union, and, consequently, that she could not be received on that plan. The Constitution requires an adoption in toto and forever. It has been so adopted by the other States.

"An adoption for a limited time would be as defective as an adoption of some of the articles only. In short, any

condition whatever must vitiate the ratification.

What the

new Congress, by virtue of the power to admit new States, may be able and disposed to do in such a case, I do not imagine, as I suppose that it is not the material point at present. I have not a moment to add more than my fervent wishes for your success and happiness. The idea of a right to withdraw was started at Richmond, and considered as conditional ratification, which was itself abandoned as worse than a rejection.

Yours,

"JAMES MADISON, JR."

This was the law of the Constitution as interpreted by one of its most careful and learned framers, as against the modern commercialism of New York, that was anxious to agree to secession, and ready, as their authorities said, to go into it. Senator Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland, who was intimate with and lived for a time in the same house with John C. Calhoun, in a letter to Mr. Everett about June, 1861, wrote as follows:

"Calhoun did me the honor to give me much of his confidence, and frequently his nullification doctrine was the subJect of conversation. Time and again have I heard him, and with ever-increased surprise at his wonderful acuteness, defend it on Constitutional grounds, and distinguish it, in that respect, from the doctrine of secession. This last he never, with me, placed on any other ground than that of revolution. This he said was to destroy the Government; and no Constitution, the work of sane men, ever provided for its own destruction. The other was to preserve it, was, practically, but to amend it, and in a Constitutional mode."

In the same line of reasoning, Secretary Howell Cobb, of Georgia, in Buchanan's Cabinet, who was for a generation a leading and well-informed representative and senator from his State, in 1851, when asked particularly as to the right of a State to secede, said: "When asked to concede the right