20th, 1860) to inquiries of Mr. Buchanan, gave his official opinion, as Attorney-General (and a "State Rights" advocate, it may be added), that it was not in the power even of Congress to prevent a violation of the Constitution by making war upon any State; and the Executive, it soon became evident, would pursue a course in conformity with this theory.

The Legislature of South Carolina initiated the Secession movement, when, in November, 1860, that body passed an act summoning a State Convention to meet at Columbia on the 17th of the ensuing month. Francis W. Pickens, who was elected Governor on the 10th, distinctly declared, in his inaugural, the determination of South Carolina to secede, because, "in the recent election for President and Vice-President, the North had carried the election upon principles which make it no longer safe for us to rely upon the powers of the Federal Government or the guarantees of the Federal compact." If untrue, the declaration was yet unequivocal, inasmuch as it foretold the coming event. Convention adjourned from Columbia to Charleston on the first day of its session, and, on the 20th of December, an ordinance was passed, whereby the ordinance of 1788, ratifying the Federal Constitution, was unanimously declared repealed, and the union existing between South Carolina and the United States dissolved.

The

South Carolina was thus the first State to pass an ordinance of secession. So far as she was concerned, secession was the steadily increasing growth of more than two generations. "And the disclosures which have since been made, imperfect, comparatively, as they are, prove clearly that the whole secession movement was in the hands of a few conspirators, who had their head

quarters at the national capital, and were themselves closely connected with the Government of the United States." At a secret meeting of these conspirators, January 5th, 1861, at which many Southern Senators were present, "it was decided that each Southern State should secede from the Union as soon as possible; that a convention of seceding States should be held at Montgomery, Alabama, not later than the 15th of February; and that the Senators and Members of Congress from the Southern States ought to remain in their seats as long as possible, in order to defeat measures that might be proposed at Washington hostile to the secession movement. Davis, of Mississippi, Slidell, of Louisiana, and Mallory, of Florida, were appointed a committee to carry these decisions into effect; and in pursuance of them, Mississippi passed an ordinance of secession, January 9th; Alabama and Florida, January 11th; Louisiana, January 26th; and Texas, February 5th. All these acts, as well as all which followed, were simply the execution of the behests of this secret conclave of leading spirits who had long resolved upon secession.

Although the Legislatures of these seceding States had enjoined upon the conventions not to pass any act of secession without making its validity depend upon a popular ratification at the polls, in scarcely one of them was the question submitted to the vote of the people! In accordance with the programme, delegates were commissioned by all the conventions to meet at Montgomery; and this inter-State Convention duly assembled on the 4th of February. A Provisional Constitution was adopted, to continue for one year; and, under this instrument, Jefferson Davis was elected President of the newly-formed Southern Confederacy, and Alexander H.

Stephens, Vice-President. They were inaugurated on the 18th.

The immediate policy determined on was to maintain a status quo until Mr. Buchanan's term should expire; feeling that they had nothing to apprehend from him, and hoping, by an increase and pretentious display of power, to frighten the new Administration into a relinquishment of any coercive designs which they might have contemplated; and, with a blindness little short of infatuation, they persisted in the belief that a preponderating influence in the North was favourable to their schemes.

The conspirators, however, were busily preparing for the contingency of war. The South was alive with military organizations; and the manufacture of warmunitions was industriously prosecuted.

The extent of the ground we are compelled to compass, and the limited space to which we are allotted, compel us to touch but lightly upon these events which are so interwoven with the political biography of Mr. Lincoln, in order that we may do justice to the most important of those which followed.

In all their vaunting confidence, in all their professed contempt for Northern courage, and braggart promises of future deeds, the leaders of the revolt committed at least one fatal fallacy-overlooked at least one unconquerable obstacle to their success: they failed to appreciate the simple strength, the honest hardihood, the great-hearted, invincible courage of Abraham Lincoln. It may be that his very simplicity of soul made him too incredulous of the extent of the malignity of his opponents; but, when thoroughly cognizant of their "depth of guile," they discovered their fatal mistake in supposing

that his hitherto conciliatory course had been in the least owing to timidity.

Vain efforts of compromise absorbed the first months of the new year at the national capital. Congress tried its efforts to placate the boiling elements of secession. The Peace conference brought forward its olive branch

but in vain. There was one thing which the South desired separation. Therefore, no terms which could be named with a remnant of honour on the part of the Republicans, were acceptable. "Southern Independence” the pro-slavery extensionists would have, even at the hazard of war.

Mr. Lincoln had maintained a remarkable reticence from the day of his election. He left Springfield on the 11th of February, 1861, and was escorted to the railroad depôt by a large concourse of his fellowtownsmen. He bade them farewell in a brief, noncommittal address, and proceeded on his way eastward.

In the evening, after his arrival at Indianapolis, he made an address to the members of the Legislature, who waited upon him in a body at his hotel; and this address, significant as it is in being his first public allusion to national affairs since his election, and from the commotion it created in consequence throughout the land, we must present in full:—

"Fellow-citizens of the State of Indiana: I am here to thank you much for this magnificent welcome, and still more for the very generous support given by your State to that political cause which, I think, is the true and just cause of the whole country and the whole world. Solomon says, 'There is a time to keep silence;' and when men wrangle by the mouth, with no certainty that they mean the same thing while using the same

words, it perhaps were as well if they would but keep silence. The words 'coercion' and 'invasion' are much used in these days, and often with some temper and hot blood. Let us make sure, if we can, that we do not misunderstand the meaning of those who use them. Let us get the exact definition of these words, not from dictionaries, but from the men themselves, who certainly deprecate the things they would represent by the use of the words. What, then, is 'coercion'? What is 'invasion'? Would the marching an army into South Carolina, without the consent of her people, and with hostile intent towards them, be invasion? I certainly think it would, and it would be 'coercion' also, if the South Carolinians were forced to submit. But if the United States should merely hold and retake its own forts and other property, and collect the duties on foreign importations, or even withhold the mails from places where they were habitually violated, would any or all of these things be 'invasion' or coercion'? Do our professed lovers of the Union, but who spitefully resolve that they will resist coercion and invasion, understand that such things as these, on the part of the United States, would be coercion or invasion of a State? If so, their idea of means to preserve the object of their great affection would seem to be exceedingly thin and airy. If sick, the little pills of the homœopathist would be much too large for it to swallow. In their view, the Union, as a family relation, would seem to be no regular marriage, but rather a sort of 'free-love' arrangement, to be maintained by passional attraction. By the way, in what consists the special sacredness of a State? I speak not of the position assigned to a State in the Union by the Constitution, for that is the bond we all