taking part in what they fondly deemed to be the formation of a new and prosperous confederacy. According to the programme of the secessionists, South Carolina led off in the formal proceedings of leave-taking. That State had long been the home of disunion, and there was a certain propriety in conceding to it the leadership of the new movement. The ordinance of secession was adopted by South Carolina November 17, 1860. Mississippi followed January 9, 1861; Florida, January 10th; Alabama, January 11th; Georgia, January 19th; Louisiana, January 25th; and Texas, February 1st. So that by the time Lincoln was ready to go to Washington to take the oath of office, seven States had declared themselves out of the Union. They did not at once form a separate confederacy, but each State declared itself independent of the union of the States to which each had belonged. Thus in South Carolina, after the ordinance of secession had been passed, declaring that the union then subsisting between South Carolina and other States under the name of the United States of America was dissolved, Pickens, Governor of the State, issued a proclamation declaring South Carolina to be "a free, sovereign, and independent State." This action filled the city of Charleston, the headquarters of rebellion, with delirious joy and every manifestation of delight. Popular gatherings of every description and private festivities celebrated the event to which the people of that devoted city had so long looked forward with eager expectation. Hatred for the union of the States was evinced in every possible way, the Amer

ican flag being covered with indignity of the most childish description. At one of the secession balls the dancers went through the idle ceremony of dancing on the flag, spread out on the floor of the

room.

On the 4th of February, 1861, representatives of the seceding States assembled in Montgomery, Alabama, formed a confederacy of States, and elected Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, provisional President, and Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, Vice-President. This is the same Davis who was engaged in the Black Hawk war when Lincoln was, being then an officer of the United States army. He had been educated at the West Point Military Academy at the expense of the Republic. The machinery of the new confederacy was now set up, and, by appointing secretaries for the different executive departments of the government, Davis took the first step in the direction of putting that machinery in action.

Lincoln, at Springfield, lingering in his home until such time as was necessary for him to depart for Washington, beheld all these revolutionary proceedings with profound anxiety. He was powerless to lift a hand against the traitors who were seeking the destruction of the Federal Union, for, although he had been called to be President of the United States, he was as yet a private citizen. And while the loyal people of the Republic longed and prayed for a strong man at the helm of the National Government, and waited for the fourth of March to come and see Abraham Lincoln in the chair of state, he remained passive, counselling patience and moderation to all

with whom he came in contact, and framing in his mind the pleading, expostulating, and generous inaugural address that he subsequently delivered. Jefferson Davis, on the other hand, gave voice to the hatred and vindictiveness of the slavery leaders, when, on his way from his home to be inaugurated in Montgomery, he said: "We will carry the war where it is easy to advance, where food for the sword and the torch awaits our armies in the densely populated cities." On the one side were forbearance, magnanimity, and Christian patience. On the other side were hatred, vaporing, and threats of violence.

But it should not be hastily assumed that all the Southern men of prominence were in this frame of mind. There were among them not a few who regarded these delirious performances with inexpressible sadness, and who looked on the acts of secession as supreme folly. Thus Alexander H. Stephens, one of the ablest of the Southern leaders, endeavored to dissuade the convention of his State from passing the ordinance of secession. He knew Lincoln well; and he knew his generosity, his justness, and his ardent patriotism. Speaking to the convention, Stephens said: "Pause, I entreat you, and consider for a moment what reasons you can give that will even satisfy you in your calmer moments-what reasons you can give to your fellow-sufferers in the calamity that it will bring upon us. What reasons can you give to the nations of the earth to justify it?" And, speaking of the slave property, to preserve which the South proposed to invite war, he

said that they might lose all, and have their last slave wrenched from them by stern military rule, "or by the vindictive decree of a universal emancipation, which may reasonably be expected to follow."

Lincoln had, from the first, believed that the Government could not exist half slave and half free. By the act of rebellion against the Union, the Southern States were inviting war; and war, as their future Vice-President now told them, might reasonably be expected to bring universal emancipation of the slaves. Stephens put into the form of words what Lincoln had seen from afar was possible. Lincoln knew that in the shock of war slavery must go down; but he resolutely set his face against doing anything that should hasten the day of emancipation except by such means as he believed to be constitutional and lawful. He determined to preserve, if possible, the Union. Slavery must take care of itself; he would not touch it. The South rushed upon its doom.

Meanwhile, sundry well-intentioned men

doing what they thought best to counteract the wave of hostility that had begun to rise in the North. A steamer chartered by the government to take provisions to the United States troops shut up in Charleston Harbor had been fired on from the Rebel works on the shore, and the attitude of the South was gradually growing more and more warlike. This kindled indignation and bitterness in the Northern States. A peace congress assembled in Washington to concert measures for the averting of war. Union meetings were held in New York and other large

cities in the free States, everybody being desirous, apparently, of doing whatever could reasonably be done to pacify the South, angry at the election of a "sectional candidate." The Southerners forgot that they had made freedom sectional.

It should be said, also, that in communities where the trade and commerce of the Southern people had been large, there was something like a panic at the near prospect of a war with the slave States., Cotton, that great staple of the Gulf States, was one of the great needs of the manufacturing States of the North. The Southern States did not manufacture many goods, and their dependence on the North was also one reason why these latter should not go to war. They would lose their profitable customers. Thus the desire in the North for peace was natural and strong.