ington, February 2d, 1861, and addressed to a paper in Tennessee, with the purpose of dissuading the people of that State from taking part with secession :

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"You must remember that there are disunionists among the party leader at the North, as well as at the South; men whose hostility to slavery is stronger than their fidelity to the Constitution, and who believe that the d ruption of the Union would draw after it, as an inevitable consequence, civil war, servile insurrection, and finally, the utter extermination of slavery, in all the Southern States. The Northern disunionists, like the disunionists of the South, are violently opposed to all compromises, or constitutional amendments, or efforts at conciliation, whereby peace should be restored and the Union preserved. They are striving to break up the Union, under the pro tence of unbounded devotion to it. They are struggling to overthrow the Constitution, while professing undying attachment to it, and a willingness to make any sacrifice to maintain it.'

"They are trying to plunge the country into civil war, as the surest means of destroying the Union, upon the plea of enforcing the laws and protecting the public property. If they can defeat any adjustment or compromise, by which the points at issue may be satisfactorily settled, and keep up the irritstion, so as to induce the Border States to follow the cotton States, they l feel certain of the accomplishment of their ultimate designs. Nothing will gratify them so much, or contribute so effectually to their success, as the cession of Tennessee and the Border States. Every State that withdraws from the Union increases the relative power of the Northern abolitionists to defeat a satisfactory adjustment."

On the same day that this letter was written, Mr. Everett, then at Washington, addressed a letter to a committee of citizens of Boston, who had in preparation the arrangements for a "Union meeting" at Faneuil Hall. The meeting was duly held, and was unsurpassed for the multitude in attendance and the interest exhibited; and the fact that the "Crittenden Proposition" received the unanimous and enthusiastic approval of the vast assemblage gathered in the capital city of New England, may afford some reasonable indication of the support it was likely to obtain, if submitted by Congress to the whole people of the United States. Mr. Everett's letter contained the following passages:

1 There was another class, however, who boasted of having publicly burned the Constitution, and that they had been for years engaged in efforts to destroy

the Union.

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MR. EVERETT ON THE SITUATION.

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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.

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"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 govern ments 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 de tail of facts which history is bound to record, is another mat ter. 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

RADICALS WEAK AGAINST THE COUNTRY.

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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.

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 o 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 UnionThe Grand Naval Expedition, and the Assault on Fort Sumter.-Mr. Campbell, er Associate 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 incongru 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