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"The crisis is one of greater danger and importance than has ever before existed. * * * The course of the remaining Southern States will be decided in a few days. They are under opposing influences. A strong conservative sentiment binds them to the Union; a natural sympathy with the seceding States draws them in an opposite direction.

*

"If they adhere to the Union, there will be no insuperable difficulty in winning back the sister States, which have temporarily withdrawn from us; but if the Border States are drawn into the Southern Confederacy, the fate of the country is sealed. To expect to hold fifteen States in the Union by force is preposterous. The idea of a civil war, accompanied as it would be by a servile insurrection, is too monstrous to be entertained for a moment. If our sister States must leave us, in the name of Heaven let them go in peace! I agree in the sentiment, that the people alone can avert these dire calamities. Political leaders, however well disposed, are hampered by previous committals, and controlled by their associates. The action of Congress, unless accelerated by an urgent impulse from the ultimate source of power, is too much impeded by the forms of legislation and tediousness of de bate. There is no hope from the political parties of the country-agencies, unhappily, too potent for mischief, but, in the present extremity, powerless for good, except by a generous sacrifice of all party views, interest, and ambition, to the public weal."

But the difficulty here was, that the direction of affairs was in the hands of political leaders, "hampered by previous committals and controlled by their associates;" so that the question could not reach the people, in any such definite shape, as to obtain an efficient expression of their will. Numerous meetings, like that at Faneuil Hall, were held in the principal cities and elsewhere at the North. But they were merely popular assemblages of conservative citizens, known expressly as "Union men "-from which "agencies unhappily too potent for mischief," induced the body of the supporters of the coming administration to withhold their countenance. What was wanted was, the legitimate vote of the people, according to the ordinary forms, upon a definite question submitted to their determination by the law-making power. But this Congress refused to grant. Truly, the "times were great, and the men were small"

It is proper to state, that in the midst of these expressions of popular sentiment and feeling, on the 11th of February, the lower branch of Congress passed the subjoined resolu

tions, with the unanimous support of the Republican members; upon which the Senate, however, took no action:

Resolved, That neither the Federal Government, nor the people, or governments of non-slaveholding States, have a purpose, or a constitutional right to legislate upon, or interfere with slavery, in any of the States of the Union.

Resolved, That those persons in the North, who do not subscribe to the foregoing propositions, are too insignificant in numbers and influence, to excite the serious attention or alarm of any portion of the people of the republic; and that the increase of their numbers and influence does not keep pace with the increase of the aggregate population of the North.

That such a profession of views as this was politic, in order to throw the blame of needless disturbance upon the South, and also to meet and to unite the sentiment of Northern popular majorities, there can be no doubt. A war professedly for abolition could hardly have enlisted a dozen regiments in the North. How far such a declaration was consistent with the statements of Mr. Douglas, for example, in regard to the opinions and purposes of men in eminent public station, with whom he was in habits of daily intercourse, or with that detail of facts which history is bound to record, is another matter. But, while it is certain, that the faction of the party thus stigmatized was, at the very moment, not only its most active agent, but the very nucleus around which the party itself had gradually formed itself-and did eventually, by regular advances, mainly mould its policy and control its action-yet the world cannot fail to be convinced by the tenor of these resolutions, that the civil war, so soon to ensue, was actually begun by the North, as well as the South, upon merely political, and not upon moral or philanthropical considerations. History will also painfully record, that the woes and sacrifices of the country and the strain upon republican institutions, of which the full effect has not yet been made manifest, might all have been saved by a little manliness on the part of that class of Republican leaders described by Mr. Douglas as "Union men in good faith," who could easily have carried three-quarters of their party with them. What action the disunionist leaders and the remaining quarter

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part of the Republicans might have seen fit to take, would have been of no consequence whatever. If they had attempted revolution in consequence of the failure of their schemes, the struggle against the united power of the country would have been brief indeed, compared with that which actually took place between the discordant and contending sections.

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CHAPTER XX.

Inauguration of Mr. Lincoln.-His Character.-The Grand Question at the Time how to avoid War.-Mr. Everett's Favorable Position to judge, and his Opinion.-Resolutions of a pacific Spirit pass the House by a two-thirds Vote too late, but not acted upon in the Senate. The Inaugural Address.-The Purpose only to maintain and defend the Union-A Disavowal of any Intent to use Force.-The Policy temporizing and conciliatory.-Interview with Delegates from the Virginia Assembly after the Attack on Fort Sumter; still on the Defence.-Statement of the Purposes of Secession by the Commissioner from Mississippi to Maryland; not the Object to dissolve the Union— The Grand Naval Expedition, and the Assault on Fort Sumter.-Mr. Campbell, exAssociate Justice of the Supreme Court, and Mr. Seward-Extract from Leading Journals, in Relation to the Affair of Fort Sumter.-The New York Herald.-The Charleston Courier.-The New York Tribune.-The Herald again.—Mr. Seward, no doubt, intended to fulfil his Engagement.-The Unhappy Results of the incongruous Composition of the Republican Party.-Despatch to the New York Herald-The Effect of" Pressure."

On the fourth of March, 1861, the day following the final action of Congress in the rejection of the "Peace Measures," Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated.

The new President was a person of scarcely more than ordinary natural powers, with a mind neither cultivated by education, nor enlarged by experience in public affairs. He was thus incapable of any wide range of thought, or, in fact, of obtaining any broad grasp of general ideas. His thoughts ran in narrow channels. He was infirm of purpose, so far as to be liable to be led by sharper minds and more resolute wills; though, like persons of that character, not unfrequently insisting upon minor points of consideration, whether right or wrong. He was of that class of men, who, under color of good intentions, often fail of bringing any good purpose to pass. He had been put in training by the Western Republicans, to hold a political contest with Mr. Douglas, in order

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to become his rival for the Presidency; as manifesting certain eccentricities of thought and expression, and occasionally a humorous style of addressing popular assemblies which is taking with the multitude. By a large majority of the people he had never been heard of, before his nomination; and it was owing more to their ignorance, than to their knowledge of him, that he obtained their votes, in obedience to party dictation. He found himself at the head of affairs at the most critical period in the history of the country, and in the midst of dangers and embarrassinents sufficient to try the abilities of the most prudent and sagacious statesman; and it is no wonder that he seldom understood what the situation demanded, and seldom failed to commit mistakes when he acted for himself. His character appears to have been defiled by no vices; but much more than this was requisite in his position. Mr. Lincoln had a certain shrewdness, but was inoffensive in disposition; and in most inferior stations could scarcely have failed to win good will. His dreadful assassination threw around him the halo of martyrdom. There could hardly have been a Chief Magistrate, in whose case a fate. so tragic and terrible could seem more incongruous with all his personal characteristics. We know little more of "Duncan's " public life, than that he bore his faculties with exemplary meekness. To the murdered President the same tribute may be justly paid. He was as far from being a tyrant, as he was from being a statesman. He was undoubtedly patriotic, and sincerely so, by instinct, habit, and sentiment; but his well-known letter to the editor of the New York Tribung, overlooking the causes of Union in attempting to preserve it, shows that his patriotism was in the manner of those who do not clearly comprehend the true grounds of patriotism, or fully appreciate those objects of civil government, which inspire the cordial affections of intelligent and earnest lovers of free institutions. There have been those, since his death, who have seen fit to compare him with the first great President; but there could scarcely exist a personal contrast more marked, than that between