of the war, he based his argument, not on a
calculation of material resources, but on a simple principle of right.
Submission to any encroachment, the least as well as the greatest, on
the rights of a State means slavery. To us submission meant slavery, as
it did to Pericles and the Athenians; as it did to the great historian
of Greece, who had learned this lesson from the Peloponnesian war, and
who took sides with the Southern States, to the great dismay of his
fellow-radicals, who could not see, as George Grote saw, the real point
at issue in the controversy. Submission is slavery, and the bitterest
taunt in the vocabulary of those who advocated secession was
"submissionist." But where does submission begin? Who is to mark the
point of encroachment? That is a matter which must be decided by the
sovereign; and on the theory that the States are sovereign, each State
must be the judge. The extreme Southern States considered their rights
menaced by the issue of the presidential election. Virginia and the
Border States were more deliberate; and Virginia's "pausing" was the
theme of much mockery in the State and out of it, from friend and from
foe alike. Her love of peace, her love of the Union, were set down now
to cowardice, now to cunning. The Mother of States and Queller of
Tyrants was caricatured as Mrs. Facing-both-ways; and the great
commonwealth that even Mr. Lodge's statistics cannot displace from her
leadership in the history of the country was charged with trading on her
neutrality. Her solemn protest was unheeded. The "serried phalanx of her
gallant sons" that should "prevent the passage of the United States
forces" was an expression that amused Northern critics of style as a bit
of antiquated Southern rodomontade. But the call for troops showed that
the rodomontade meant something. Virginia had made her decision; and if
the United States forces did not find a serried phalanx barring their
way,--a serried phalanx is somewhat out of date,--they found something
that answered the purpose as well.

[Note: The friend was the late A. MARSHALL ELLIOTT, Professor of Romance
Languages in the Johns Hopkins, whose life of study was matched by a
life of adventure.]

The war began, the war went on. Passion was roused to fever heat. Both
sides "saw red," that physiological condition which to a Frenchman
excuses everything. The proverbial good humor of the American people did
not, it is true, desert the country, and the South