and river line, not less than four thousand miles in length, has swarmed with fleets freighted with artillery.  The very industry of the country seemed to have been touched by some infernal wand, and, with sudden wheel, changed its front from peace to war.  The anvils of the land beat like drums.  As out of the ooze emerge monsters, so from our mines and foundries uprose new and strange machines of war, ironclad.  And so, in a nation of peaceful habits, without external provocation, there arose such a storm of war as blackened the whole horizon and hemisphere.  What wonder that foreign observers stood amazed at this fanatical fury, that seemed without Divine guidance, but inspired wholly with infernal frenzy.  The explosion was sudden, but the train had long been laid.  We must consider the condition of Southern society, if we would understand the mystery of this iniquity.  Society in the South resolves itself into three divisions, more sharply distinguished than in any other part of the nation.  At the base is the laboring class, made up of slaves.  Next is the middle class, made up of traders, small farmers, and poor men.  The lower edge of this class touches the slave, and the upper edge reaches up to the third and ruling class.  This class was a small minority in numbers, but in practical ability they had centred in their hands the whole government of the South, and had mainly governed the country.  Upon this polished, cultured, exceedingly capable, and wholly unprincipled class, rests the whole burden of this war.  Forced up by the bottom heat of slavery, the ruling class in all the disloyal States arrogated to themselves a superiority not compatible with republican equality, nor with just morals.  They claimed a right of pre-eminence.  An evil prophet arose who trained these wild and luxuriant shoots of ambition to the shapely form of a political philosophy.  By its reagents they precipitated drudgery to the bottom of society, and left at the top what they thought to be a clarified fluid.  In their political economy, labor was to be owned by capital; in their theory of government, the few were to rule the many.  They boldly avowed, not the fact alone, that, under all forms of government, the few rule the many, but their right and duty to do so.  Set free from the necessity of labor, they conceived a contempt for those who felt its wholesome regimen.  Believing themselves foreordained to supremacy, they regarded the popular vote, when it failed to register their wishes, as an intrusion and a nuisance.  They were born in a garden, and popular liberty, like freshets overswelling their banks, but covered their dainty walks and flowers with slime and mud—­of democratic votes.  When, with shrewd observation, they saw the growth of the popular element in the Northern States, they instinctively took in the inevitable events.  It must be controlled or cut off from a nation governed by gentlemen!  Controlled, less and less, could it be in every decade; and they prepared