to the other,” and saying that, “if eight States, having five millions of people, choose to separate from us, they cannot be permanently withheld from so doing by federal cannon.”  On December 17 he even said that the South had as good a right to secede from the Union as the colonies had to secede from Great Britain, and that he “would not stand up for coercion, for subjugation,” because he did not “think it would be just.”  On February 23, 1861, he said that if the Cotton States, or the Gulf States, “choose to form an independent nation, they have a clear moral right to do so,” and if the “great body of the Southern people” become alienated from the Union and wish to “escape from it, we will do our best to forward their views.”  A volume could be filled with the like writing of his prolific pen at this time, and every sentence of such purport was the casting of a new stone to create an almost impassable obstruction in the path along which the new President must soon endeavor to move.  Thurlow Weed, editor of the Albany “Evening Journal,” and the confidential adviser of Seward, wrote in favor of concessions; he declared that “a victorious party can afford to be tolerant;” and he advocated a convention to revise the Constitution, on the ground that, “after more than seventy years of wear and tear, of collision and abrasion, it should be no cause of wonder that the machinery of government is found weakened, or out of repair, or even defective.”  Frequently he uttered the wish, vague and of fine sound, but enervating, that the Republicans might “meet secession as patriots and not as partisans.”  On November 9 the Democratic New York “Herald,” discussing the election of Lincoln, said:  “For far less than this our fathers seceded from Great Britain;” it also declared coercion to be “out of the question,” and laid down the principle that each State possesses “the right to break the tie of the confederacy, as a nation might break a treaty, and to repel coercion as a nation might repel invasion.”

Local elections in New York and Massachusetts “showed a striking and general reduction of Republican strength.”  In December the mayor of Philadelphia, though that city had polled a heavy Republican majority, told a mass meeting in Independence Square that denunciations of slavery were inconsistent with national brotherhood, and “must be frowned down by a just and law-abiding people.”  The Bell and Everett men, generally, desired peace at any price.  The business men of the North, alarmed at the prospect of disorder, became loudly solicitous for concession, compromise, even surrender.[118] In Democratic meetings a threatening tone was adopted.  One proposal was to reconstruct the Union, leaving out the New England States.  So late even as January 21, 1861, before an immense and noteworthy gathering in New York, an orator ventured to say:  “If a revolution of force is to begin, it shall be inaugurated at home;” and the words were cheered.  The distinguished Chancellor