Union.  It was not that they loved slavery less, but that they hated the Union more.  Even if the country should submit to the South, the leaders of this faction knew that they would not be the Southrons to whom should be intrusted the powers and the business of government.  Few of them were of much account even in their own States, and generally they could have been set down as chiefs of the opposition to everything that was reasonable.  A remarkable proof of the little hold which this class of men had on even the most mad of the Southern States, when at the height of their fury, was afforded by the refusal of South Carolina to elect Mr. Rhett Governor, her Legislature conferring that post on Mr. Pickens, a moderate man when compared with Mr. Rhett, and who, there is reason for believing, would have prevented a resort to Secession altogether, could he have done so without sacrificing what he held to be his honor.

The third Southern party consisted of men who desired the continuance of the Union, but who wished that some “concessions” should be made, or “compromises” effected, in order to satisfy men, one portion of whom were resolved upon having everything, while the other portion were resolute in their purpose to destroy everything that then existed of a national character.  This third party was mostly composed of those timid men whose votes count for much at ordinary periods, but who in extraordinary times are worse than worthless, being in fact incumbrances on bolder men.  They loved the Union, because they loved peace, and were opposed to violence of all kinds; but their Unionism was much like Bailie Macwheeble’s conscience, which was described as never doing him any harm.  What they would have done, had Government been able to send a strong force to their assistance at the beginning of the war, we cannot undertake to say; but they have done little to aid the Federal cause in the field, while their influence in the Federal councils has been more prejudicial to the country than the open exertions of the Secessionists to effect the nation’s destruction.

Of these parties, the first had every reason to believe that it could soon regain possession of Congress, and that in 1864 it would be able to elect its candidate to the Presidency.  Hence it had no wish to dissolve the Union; and if its leaders could have had their way, the Union would have been spared.  But the second party, making up for its deficiency in numbers by the intensity of its zeal, and laboring untiringly, was too much for the moderates.  Hate is a stronger feeling than love of any kind, stronger even than love of spoils; and the men who followed Rhett and Yancey, Pryor and Spratt, hated the Union with a perfect hatred.  They got ahead of the men who followed Davis and Stephens, and the rest of those Southern chiefs who would have been content with the complete triumph of Southern principles in the Republic as it stood in 1860.  As they broke up the Democratic