“So I supposed.  That agrees with what I hear by letter.  Well, I am very sorry for it.  Our people here will not retreat; they will accept a war, first.  If you preserve the Union, it must be by conquest.  I suppose you can do it, if you try hard enough.  The North is a great deal stronger than the South; it can desolate it,—­crush it.  But I hope it won’t be done.  I wish you would speak a good word for us, when you go back.  You can destroy us, I suppose.  But don’t you think it would be inhuman?  Don’t you think it would be impolitic?  Do you think it would result in sufficient good to counterbalance the evident and certain evil?”

“Why, people reason in this way.  They say, that, even if we allow the final independence of the seceding States, we must make it clear that there is no such thing as the right of secession, but only that of revolution or rebellion.  We must fix a price for going out of the Union, which shall be so high that henceforward no State will ever be willing to pay it.  We must kill, once for all, the doctrine of peaceable secession, which is nothing else than national disintegration and ruin.  Lieutenant-Governor Morton of Indiana declares in substance that England never spent blood and money to wiser purpose than when she laid down fifty thousand lives and one hundred millions of pounds to prevent her thirteen disaffected colonies from having their own way.  No English colony since has been willing to face the tremendous issue thus offered it.  Just so it is the interest, it is the sole safety of the Federal Government, to try to hold in the Cotton States by force, and, if they go out, to oblige them to pay an enormous price for the privilege.  Revolution is a troublesome luxury, and ought to be made expensive.  That is the way people talk at the North and at Washington.  They reason thus, you see, because they believe that this is not a league, but a nation.”

“And our people believe that the States are independent and have a right to recede from the Confederation without asking its leave.  With few exceptions, all agree on that; it is honest, common public opinion.  The South Carolinians sincerely think that they are exercising a right, and you may depend that they will not be reasoned nor frightened out of it; and if the North tries coercion, there will be war.  I don’t say this defiantly, but sadly, and merely because I want you to know the truth.  War is abhorrent to my feelings,—­especially a war with our own brethren:  and then we are so poorly prepared for it!”

Such was the substance of several conversations.  The reader may rely, I think, on the justness of my friend’s opinions, founded as they are on his honesty of intellect, his moderation, and his opportunities for studying his fellow-citizens.  All told me the same story, but generally with more passion, sometimes with defiance; defiance toward the Government, I mean, and not toward me personally; for the better classes