the less intense for that.  There is perhaps no better expression of this widespread feeling in the North than the unprepared speech which he delivered on his way to become President, in the Hall of Independence at Philadelphia, in which the Declaration of Independence had been signed.  “I have never,” he said, “had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.  I have often pondered over the dangers which were incurred by the men who assembled here and framed and adopted that Declaration of Independence.  I have pondered over the toils that were endured by the officers and soldiers of the army who achieved that independence.  I have often inquired of myself what great principle or idea it was that kept the Confederacy so long together.  It was not the mere matter of separation of the colonies from the motherland, it was the sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but I hope to the world, for all future time.  It was that which gave promise that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men.”

2. The Progress of Secession.

So much for the broad causes without which there could have been no Civil War in America.  We have now to sketch the process by which the fuel was kindled.  It will be remembered that the President elected in November does not enter upon his office for nearly four months.  For that time, therefore, the conduct of government lay in the hands of President Buchanan, who, for all his past subserviency to Southern interests, believed and said that secession was absolutely unlawful.  Several members of his Cabinet were Southerners who favoured secession; but the only considerable man among them, Cobb of Georgia, soon declared that his loyalty to his own State was not compatible with his office and resigned; and, though others, including the Secretary for War, hung on to their position, it does not appear that they influenced Buchanan much, or that their somewhat dubious conduct while they remained was of great importance.  Black, the Attorney-General, and Cass, the Secretary of State, who, however, resigned when his advice was disregarded, were not only loyal to the Union, but anxious that the Government should do everything that seemed necessary in its defence.  Thus this administration, hitherto Southern in its sympathies, must be regarded for its remaining months as standing for the Union, so far as it stood for anything.  Lincoln meanwhile had little that he could do but to watch events and prepare.  There was, nevertheless, a point in the negotiations which took place between parties at which he took on himself a tremendous responsibility and at which his action was probably decisive of all that followed.