determined to make permanent; second, that they had persuaded themselves, in face of the tendencies of civilisation, that it was possible to make it permanent; and third, that they conscientiously held their progress and prosperity to be dependent on its continued existence.  Are we to believe that the standard of morals and intelligence was so low as these admissions would indicate?  Are we to believe that if they had been approached in a charitable spirit, that if the Republican party, disclaiming all right of interference, had offered to aid them in substituting, by some means which would have provided for the control of the negro and, at the same time, have prevented an entire collapse of the social fabric, a system more consonant with humanity, the Southerners would have still preferred to leave the Union, and by creating a great slave-power earn the execration of the Christian world?

Unless the South be credited with an unusual measure of depravity and of short-sightedness, the reply can hardly be in the affirmative.  And if it be otherwise, there remains but one explanation of the conduct of the seceding States—­namely the dread that if they remained in the Union they would not be fairly treated.

It is futile to argue that the people were dragooned into secession by the slave-holders.  What power had the slave-holders over the great mass of the population, over the professional classes, over the small farmer, the mechanic, the tradesman, the labourer?  Yet it is constantly asserted by Northern writers, although the statement is virtually an admission that only the few were prepared to fight for slavery, that the Federal sentiment was so strong among the Southerners that terrorism must have had a large share in turning them into Separatists.  The answer, putting aside the very patent fact that the Southerner was not easily coerced, is very plain.  Undoubtedly, throughout the South there was much affection for the Union; but so in the first Revolution there was much loyalty to the Crown, and yet it has never been asserted that the people of Virginia or of New England were forced into sedition against their will.  The truth is that there were many Southerners who, in the vain hope of compromise, would have postponed the rupture; but when the right of secession was questioned, and the right of coercion was proclaimed, all differences of opinion were swept away, and the people, thenceforward, were of one heart and mind.  The action of Virginia is a striking illustration.

The great border State, the most important of those south of Mason and Dixon’s line, was not a member of the Confederacy when the Provisional Government was established at Montgomery.  Nor did the secession movement secure any strong measure of approval.  In fact, the people of Virginia, owing to their closer proximity to, and to their more intimate knowledge of, the North, were by no means inclined to make of the Black Republican President the bugbear he appeared