ture generations will not
understand the difficulties before him,--perhaps he himself did not.
The administration of Buchanan had prepared for the secession, and
Buchanan as minister to England had already established the opinion
of the governing class in that country in the certainty of impending
separation,--a fact which should be remembered when we judge the
attitude of England; the fleet had been dispersed to the ends of the
earth, and the officers of the army were mainly Southerners. The
support of New York and Massachusetts was of the gravest importance.
The former was largely under the influence of Seward, and he was
inclined by nature to conciliation; in the latter State, General
Butler, a Democrat, and of seriously questioned loyalty, had an
influence which might easily become the dominant one and carry the
State over to the Democratic opposition, which was in the country at
large distinctly opposed to coercion. The government and the ruling
class in England were clearly hostile to the North, and the position
on that side was menacing.

Had the South then been content with separation on the lines of "Mason
and Dixon's line," I am convinced that it would have taken place
without a struggle, if the position could have been defined without
bloodshed. But this was what the most sagacious of the Southern
leaders did not desire. It became evident that the majority in the
South did not desire separation, and the leaders knew that a peaceful
separation would be followed by reconstruction on something like the
old lines, for the South could not stand alone industrially; so that
they had not concealed their determination to invade the Middle and
Western States, and carry them forcibly over to the new Confederacy,
"leaving out New England." It was generally known that Pennsylvania
and New Jersey were Democratic and lukewarm for the old Union, and
that Ohio and the West would not resist if there were a successful
beginning of a movement and a military invasion. So far as the
sentiments of the politicians were concerned, the South had a very
correct idea of the probabilities of the situation; what they were
utterly ignorant of was the spirit of the masses in the North, which
they thought to coerce easily. There they were mistaken, and there
Lincoln saw his strength, and that saved the country; for, with the
firing on Fort Sumter and the open insult to the flag, the Northern
masses took fire, and the conflagration burned ou