whole South went with her. They were encouraged to do this by neither division of the Democratic party. On the 12th of November, 1860, in an address to the Democrats, the writer, after denouncing secession and predicting the futility of its purposes and final defeat, said:

"We now see what divisions and false issues have done, and can do. Let us from this hour devote ourselves to organizing upon the great issue of equal rights of the States and of the people of each. Let us invoke our friends to abandon all collateral and immaterial issues, and concentrate on this great and controlling one. The majority of our countrymen are with us upon it, and will rally under our standard, and success is certain. The Federal and State Governments will pass from the hands of our enemies to ours, and we can redress all wrongs and restore peace and harmony to the Union and every part of it. The Democracy can do much in calling conventions and solemnly invoking the sense and justice of the people, and inducing organization and concerted action, and by making individual appeals to the friends of the Union. Our Democratic friends in the several States should obliterate divisions and join in the good work. Every Democrat has a duty resting upon him, and should perform it. He should appeal to the sense of justice of those who have erred, as brother does to brother. Success will follow such efforts. Let us begin the good work now, and persevere to the end. Let us now pledge ourselves to one another, and to the country, to be faithful and vigilant. Let us call upon high Heaven to witness our vow, that we devote ourselves to the good work; that we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor' to use every exertion possible to protect the equal and just rights of all parts of the Union-of every State and citizen-to protect the Constitution and Union by all rightful means while God shall let us live."

The Democracy adopted and sustained these views. But the abolition Republicans of the North and secessionists of the South had their respective plans, all tending to the same point from different directions, so managed as to defeat the expectations of this appeal. Mr. Lincoln had told the people he would proclaim his views on the 4th of March. His inaugural address, after under

going the manipulation of those who had proclaimed that slavery should be put down at every hazard, contained nothing to repress, but much to increase, the excitement at the South, and multiply our difficulties, as that document will show. Its avowals were calculated to band together the dissatisfied States that had taken steps to leave the Union, and form a new one, and secure among them concerted action. Mr. Lincoln had said that the excitement grew out of difference of opinion concerning the Constitution, and he soon showed a determination to fight down opinions opposed to his own.

103.-MR. LINCOLN'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

Mr. Lincoln's inaugural contained the following, which, standing alone, would have been satisfactory to the South, if fairly carried out in practice:

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'Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States, that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace, and personal security, are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and have no inclination to do so.' Those who nominated and elected me did so with a full knowledge that I have made this, and many similar declarations, and have never recanted them. And more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and as law to themselves and me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read:

"Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend, and

we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.' I now reiterate these sentiments."

He further stated:

"It follows from these views, that no State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union; and that acts of violence, within any State or States, against the authority of the United States, are insurrectionary, or revolutionary, according to circumstances.

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember and overthrow it. I cannot be ignorant of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of having the national Constitution amended.

"One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. The fugitive-slave clause of the Constitution, and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave-trade, are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, I think, cannot be perfectly cured."

These extracts exhibit pledges made before election which are inconsistent with much said during the canvass, and which have been doubly violated by subsequent practice. The Republican party, and Mr. Lincoln himself, have acted the exact reverse of their professions. Why this reference to the right of revolution? Why tell the country that the annoyances suffered by the South concerning slavery cannot be cured? Why omit to point out necessary amendments to the Constitution to avoid the admitted evils? Why hold out no hope to the excited South except in revolution? Why, in organizing his administration, did he treat· eleven Southern States as if they formed no portion of the Union? Why fill his Cabinet almost exclusively with open enemies of the

South, and why place at its head the destroyer of the old Whig party and the inventor and propagator of a law higher than the Constitution as a means of destroying the slave institutions of the South-the man who labored to precipitate a conflict between the North and South, as a means of abolition? There can be but one satisfactory answer, and that is, that he designed to inaugurate a civil war as the only possible means of abolishing slavery in the South. The Albany Evening Journal avowed that this was the object of his nomination and election, and we cannot doubt that it truly stated the intention of those controlling the Republican party.

104.-FIRING THE FIRST GUN.

The first gun was fired by order of Governor Pickens from a sand-hill battery in Charleston Harbor at the steamer Star of the West, sent, by advice of General Scott, to succor Major Anderson in Fort Sumter on the 9th of January, 1861, when that vessel, failing in its object, returned to New York. But these shots were comparatively harmless and did not fire up the masses North or South. Major Anderson did not return the fire, believing it to have been unauthorized. If the war-steamer Brooklyn had been sent, as Mr. Buchanan desired, and but for the advice of General Scott would have been sent, she would have entered the harbor, defended herself, and relieved Fort Sumter. The rickety sidewheel steamer Star of the West proved perfectly useless for the occasion. The first gun by the secession Confederacy was discharged upon Fort Sumter on the 12th of April, 1861, and the fight was continued thirty-three hours, when it was surrendered. This battle fired every heart in the nation North and South, arousing the secessionists in support of their new Confederacy, and all others against it, and in favor of defending the Constitution and the old flag. The whole North and West were aroused as one man, and all felt like hazarding every thing in defence of the Union. But different motives actuated partisans on both sides. Secession was flagging, and would have soon cooled and died off, but for invigorating excitement. It operated upon many of them like laughing-gas, and they leaped for joy. But there were those

among them who felt sad, and feared the final conclusion. At the North and West, where all seemed moving one way, two widely-differing motives existed at the bottom. The abolitionists, and those who espoused their cause as well as their party though claiming to be shocked and outraged at the folly and crime of the South, secretly rejoiced, as they saw that the conflict would make abolitionism a fixed fact, if not as to the whole Union, at least as far as it should be preserved. But the Democracy and the conservatives of the old Whig party felt and meant what they said, and were ready to peril lives and fortunes in the preservation of the Union which they loved and cherished. Thus all parties North and West agreed in action but not in motive, while at the South there was much, halting, there being many real Union men there, and others doubting the policy of secession, and fearing the result. The true Union men seldom changed their real feelings, even when forced into the army by conscription or otherwise, though some, in consequence of our unnatural and unwise policy, and the unnecessary tyranny practised, were led to the belief that the war was prosecuted for other than the avowed object, and then ceased to aid the Union cause, though occasionally one turned against it. It is not our purpose to justify what occurred, but to show the fatal effect of bad management and how it destroyed Union feeling and spread secession sentiments. We give extracts from a letter written by one of Tennessee's purest and best and most widely-known men-Hon. Cave Johnsonunder date of March 2, 1862, not as a justification of any acts o opinions, but to show the consequences that naturally flowed from misgovernment:

"In our elections, February 9, 1861, the majority against secession exceeded sixty-four thousand, and that after the election of Lincoln, with the declaration in his mouth, that the whole country must be free or slave territory. But after the proclamation making war upon the States, and his other acts disregarding the Constitution, and sustained with so much apparent unanimity in the North, at the elections in June, the majority against the Union was over fifty-nine thousand, and I believe if a new election could be held to-morrow, the majority against it would dou