pular emotions is to be found in popular
humorists. Shortly after these days Artemus Ward, the author who
almost vied with Shakespeare in Lincoln's affections, relates how the
confiscation of his show in the South led him to have an interview with
Jefferson Davis. "Even now," said Davis, in this pleasant fiction, "we
have many frens in the North." "J. Davis," is the reply, "there's your
grate mistaik. Many of us was your sincere frends, and thought certin
parties amung us was fussin' about you and meddlin' with your consarns
intirely too much. But, J. Davis, the minit you fire a gun at the
piece of dry goods called the Star-Spangled Banner, the North gits up
and rises en massy, in defence of that banner. Not agin you as
individooals--not agin the South even--but to save the flag. We should
indeed be weak in the knees, unsound in the heart, milk-white in the
liver, and soft in the hed, if we stood quietly by and saw this glorus
Govyment smashed to pieces, either by a furrin or a intestine foe. The
gentle-harted mother hates to take her naughty child across her knee,
but she knows it is her dooty to do it. So we shall hate to whip the
naughty South, but we must do it if you don't make back tracks at onct,
and we shall wallup you out of your boots!" In the days which
followed, when this prompt chastisement could not be effected and it
seemed indeed as if the South would do most of the whipping, the
discordant elements which mingled in this unanimity soon showed
themselves. The minority that opposed the war was for a time silent
and insignificant, but among the supporters of the war there were those
who loved the Union and the Constitution and who, partly for this very
reason, had hitherto cultivated the sympathies of the South.
These--adherents mainly of the Democratic party--would desire that
civil war should be waged with the least possible breach of the
Constitution, and be concluded with the least possible social change;
many of them would wish to fight not to a finish but to a compromise.
On the other hand, there were those who loved liberty and hated alike
the slave system of the South and the arrogance which it had
engendered. These--the people distinguished within the Republican
party as Radicals--would pay little heed to constitutional restraints
in repelling an attack on the Constitution, and they would wish from
the first to make avowed war upon that which caused the war--slavery.
In the border States