ciliatory.-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, ex- 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 Пerald 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 Object of this Volume.-Except for Causes arising in the North, any Attempt at Secession in the South would have been impossible.-Two Important Questions remaining after the War.--The Speediest Restoration best for the Whole Country.—The Radical Policy. -The Emancipation Question.-An Illustration of Radical Policy from Spanish His- tory four hundred Years ago.-The End of the Republican Movement corresponds with its Beginning.-What would have been the Condition of the Country, if Emancipation had taken place when the Constitution was adopted.-The same Motive which led the Radical Managers to "precipitate" the War induces them to oppose Restoration.— The Question must soon be-"Whether we will have a reestablished Constitution and a THE OBJECTS OF THE WORK. in a In writing this book, I have endeavored to trace, manner which I trust will be intelligible to the general reader, the interior course of the long controversy, sometimes active, and again much subdued, but never absolutely at rest, between the North and the South. It was my purpose to make known whatever the facts of the case should of themselves indicate, without any regard to party interests or prepossessions. As the negro was, at the beginning, more or less conspicuously concerned in the question, and on considerations relating chiefly to the master rather than to the slave, either personally or morally; so he is still left in an uncertain condition, after a war which has destroyed more than half a million of men who were fellow-citizens, and probably twice as many of those who were made the occasion of the contest. This contest also placed the free institutions of the country in a state of peril still furnishing grounds of just apprehension. I have discussed negro-slavery in its own special relations, and the future which apparently awaits the negro race itself in this country, without consciousness of any prej udice, and only so far as those points were inevitably connected with the order of the narrative. If it should appear that the antislavery agitation, leading to such terrible public and private evils, was actually factitious in its origin and character, so far as its positively efficient agents have pursued it, and was, in reality, the fruit of a struggle for political power, instead of a moral or philanthropical demonstration, a very grave question is thus presented for the consideration of the American people. For, whatever contentment they might feel at the result, in one view of the subject, they may not be so well satisfied with the demoralization of their civil fabric, in subserviency to merely factious motives and partisan ends. If it should seem, indeed, to be a logical conclusion that the doctrine of negro equality and negro suffrage should follow, even upon the present deplorable condition of the colored population-the question may thence arise, whether the premises themselves were well laid down which could lead to consequences so much out of the order of nature and practice. Certainly, whether the past can be repaired or not, the future ought to be taken care of, for the common welfare, by an intelligent people, conscious of their own dignity and responsibilities. Nor ought they to allow politicians, for personal or party purposes, to make extreme theories the means of future and unknown ills, upon an insincere hypothesis, which cannot endure the light of either philosophy or experience. In thus presenting a sketch of the progress of those causes which led to the Southern revolt, it will be seen that slavery, though made an occasion, was not, in reality, the cause of the war. Antislavery was of no serious consequence, and had no positive influence, until politicians, at a late period, seized upon it as an instrument of agitation; and they could not have done so to any mischievous effect, except for an alleged diversity of interests between the sections, involving the question of political power. Wise and patriotic citizens for a long time kept those interests at the proper balance, or the passions which were thus stimulated under just control. As those great men passed away, self-seeking and ambitious demagogues, the pest of republics, disturbed the equilibrium, and were able, at length, to plunge the country into that worst of all public calamities, civil war. The question of morals had as little as possible to do with the result. Philanthrophy might have sighed, and fanaticism have howled for centuries in vain, but for the hope of office and the desire of public plunder, on the part of men who were neither philanthropists nor fanatics. It is the misfortune of Republican institutions that many who have paid little attention to matters of state policy, and some scarcely competent to understand it, must pass judgment upon men of superior ability and high attainments, who have made such topics the study of their lives. Hence, it has happened, in this turmoil of parties, that the latter have been too frequently set aside for inferior persons, and their better considered opinions disregarded, in favor of those of transient Congressmen, often incapable by nature, and sometimes disqualified for calm judgment by personal habits, and of Governors of States, who ought to have remained among the governed. The policy pursued might well be considered matchless in a certain direction, if, in opposition to those rights of the South, in which the interests of the North were equally concerned, and in repugnance to by far the most prevalent wishes of the North itself, and without regard to official engagements, repeatedly made, of the representative and executive departments of the Government, the country was led along into an unnecessary and unnatural war. Especially would this be the case, if, besides other consequences, the country has thus not only lessened materially, but substantially cut off, for a time at least, its chief source of permanent prosperity; and that which made it unrivalled in this respect, and by which it was becoming more and more supereminent among the nations of the earth. And the singularity of this course of action would more strikingly appear, if, in doing this, the policy had wrought an irreparable injury, if not the absolute ruin of the unhappy race which it professed thus to serve; in a word, if it has so crippled itself and made the object of its professed sympathies its victim, for a party end, and in derogation of every interest on every side, and of every dictate of reason and lesson of experience. Another object of this work has been to place in its true light the intelligent and patriotic conduct of conservative men of both the great parties, which took a leading part in the affairs of the country, until incidental causes deprived them of their due influence. The supposition that Northern gentlemen, who had no connection whatever with slavery, as an institution, no personal relations with it, as a matter of domestic economy, or of individual interest; who were actuated in all the ordinary affairs of life by principles of justice and by sentiments of honor, humanity, and generosity, maintained their public positions simply in order to uphold slavery for its own sake-is on the face of it too preposterous for the belief of any rational and candid mind. Their |