uld have been all war,--while he
was still enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law, under some theory that
Secession, however it might absolve States from their obligations,
could not escheat them of their claims under the Constitution, and that
slaveholders in rebellion had alone among mortals the privilege of
having their cake and eating it at the same time,--the enemies of free
government were striving to persuade the people that the war was an
Abolition crusade. To rebel without reason was proclaimed as one of the
rights of man, while it was carefully kept out of sight that to
suppress rebellion is the first duty of government. All the evils that
have come upon the country have been attributed to the Abolitionists,
though it is hard to see how any party can become permanently powerful
except in one of two ways,--either by the greater truth of its
principles, or the extravagance of the party opposed to it. To fancy
the ship of state, riding safe at her constitutional moorings, suddenly
engulfed by a huge kraken of Abolitionism, rising from unknown depths
and grasping it with slimy tentacles, is to look at the natural history
of the matter with the eyes of Pontoppidan. To believe that the leaders
in the Southern treason feared any danger from Abolitionism would be to
deny them ordinary intelligence, though there can be little doubt that
they made use of it to stir the passions and excite the fears of their
deluded accomplices. They rebelled, not because they thought slavery
weak, but because they believed it strong enough, not to overthrow the
government, but to get possession of it; for it becomes daily clearer
that they used rebellion only as a means of revolution, and if they got
revolution, though not in the shape they looked for, is the American
people to save them from its consequences at the cost of its own
existence? The election of Mr. Lincoln, which it was clearly in their
power to prevent had they wished, was the occasion merely, and not the
cause, of their revolt. Abolitionism, till within a year or two, was
the despised heresy of a few earnest persons, without political weight
enough to carry the election of a parish constable; and their cardinal
principle was disunion, because they were convinced that within the
Union the position of slavery was impregnable. In spite of the proverb,
great effects do not follow from small causes,--that is,
disproportionately small,--but from adequate causes acting under
certain r