No declaration had ever been made by any authority that the erection of such hostile power within the national boundaries of the United States would be followed by war; such a declaration would hardly seem necessary.  The recognition of the original national boundaries of the United States had been extorted from Great Britain by successful warfare.  They had been extended by purchase from France and Spain in 1803 and 1819, and again by war from Mexico in 1848.  The United States stood ready to guarantee their integrity by war against all the rest of the world; was an ordinance of South Carolina, or the election of a de facto government within Southern borders, likely to receive different treatment than was given British troops at Bunker Hill, or Santa Anna’s lancers at Buena Vista?  Men forgot that the national boundaries had been so drawn as to include Vermont before Vermont’s admission and without Vermont’s consent; that unofficial propositions to divide Rhode Island between Connecticut and Massachusetts, to embargo commerce with North Carolina, and demand her share of the Confederation debt, had in 1789-90 been a sufficient indication that it was easier for a State to get into the American Union than to get out of it.  It was a fact, nevertheless, that the national power to enforce the integrity of the Union had never been formally declared; and the mass of men in the South, even though they denied the expediency, did not deny the right of secession, or acknowledge the right of coercion by the Federal Government.  To reach the original area of secession with land-forces, it was necessary for the Federal Government to cross the Border States, whose people in general were no believers in the right of coercion.  The first attempt to do so extended the secession movement by methods which were far more openly revolutionary than the original secessions.  North Carolina and Arkansas seceded in orthodox fashion as soon as President Lincoln called for volunteers after the capture of Fort Sumter.  The State governments of Virginia and Tennessee concluded “military leagues” with the Confederacy, allowed Confederate troops to take possession of their States, and then submitted an ordinance of secession to the form of a popular vote.  The State officers of Missouri were chased out of the State before they could do more than begin this process.  In Maryland, the State government arrayed itself successfully against secession.

In selecting the representative opinions for this period, all the marked shades of opinion have been respected, both the Union and the anti-coercion sentiment of the Border States, the extreme secession spirit of the Gulf States, and, from the North, the moderate and the extreme Republican, and the orthodox Democratic, views.  The feeling of the so-called “peace Democrats” of the North differed so little from those of Toombs or Iverson that it has not seemed advisable to do more than refer to Vallandigham’s speech in opposition to the war, under the next period.