His hopes of a peaceful solution of the questions at issue between the North and the South were, of course, destined to be cruelly dashed, and he suffered much during the next few years, both in his feelings and in his purse, on account of the war.  I have already shown that he, with many other pious men, believed that slavery was a divine institution and that, therefore, the abolitionists were entirely in the wrong; but that, at the same time, he was unalterably opposed to secession.  Holding these views, he was misjudged in both sections of the country.  Those at the North accused him of being a secessionist because he was not an abolitionist, and many at the South held that he must be an abolitionist because he lived at the North and did not believe in the doctrine of secession.  Many pages of his letter-books are filled with vehement arguments upholding his point of view, and he, together with many other eminent men at the North, strove without success to avert the war.  His former pastor at Poughkeepsie, the Reverend H.G.  Ludlow, in long letters, with many Bible quotations, called upon him to repent him of his sins and join the cause of righteousness.  He, in still longer letters, indignantly repelled the accusation of error, and quoted chapter and verse in support of his views.  He was made the president of The American Society for promoting National Unity, and in one of his letters to Mr. Ludlow he uses forceful language:—­

“The tone of your letter calls for extraordinary drafts on Christian charity.  Your criticism upon and denunciation of a society planned in the interests of peace and good will to all, inaugurated by such men as Bishops McIlvaine and Hopkins, Drs. Krebs and Hutton, and Winslow, and Bliss, and Van Dyke, and Hawks, and Seabury, and Lord and Adams of Boston, and Wilson the missionary, and Styles and Boorman, and Professor Owen, and President Woods, and Dr. Parker, and my brothers, and many others as warm-hearted, praying, conscientious Christians as ever assembled to devise means for promoting peace—­denunciations of these and such as these cannot but be painful in the highest degree....  I lay no stress upon these names other than to show that conscience in this matter has moved some Christians quite as strongly to view Abolitionism as a sin of the deepest dye, as it has other Christian minds to view Slavery as a sin, and so to condemn slaveholders to excommunication, and simply for being slaveholders.

“Who is to decide in a conflict of consciences?  If the Bible be the umpire, as I hold it to be, then it is the Abolitionist that is denounced as worthy of excommunication; it is the Abolitionist from whom we are commanded to withdraw ourselves, while not a syllable of reproof do I find in the sacred volume administered to those who maintain, in the spirit of the gospel, the relation of Masters and Slaves.  If you have been more successful, please point out chapter and verse....  I have no justification to offer for Southern secession; I have always considered it a remedy for nothing.  It is, indeed, an expression of a sense of wrong, but, in turn, is itself a wrong, and two wrongs do not make a right.”