Even after the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln,
it was confidently announced that Jefferson Davis, the Burr of the
Southern conspiracy, would be in Washington before the month was out;
and so great was the Northern despondency, that the chances of such an
event were seriously discussed. While the nation was falling to pieces,
there were newspapers and "distinguished statesmen" of the party so
lately and so long in power base enough to be willing to make political
capital out of the common danger, and to lose their country, if
they could only find their profit. There was even one man found in
Massachusetts, who, measuring the moral standard of his party by his
own, had the unhappy audacity to declare publicly that there were
friends enough of the South in his native State to prevent the march of
any troops thence to sustain that Constitution to which he had sworn
fealty in Heaven knows how many offices, the rewards of almost as many
turnings of his political coat. There was one journal in New York which
had the insolence to speak of _President_ Davis and _Mister_ Lincoln in
the same paragraph. No wonder the "dirt-eaters" of the Carolinas could
be taught to despise a race among whom creatures might be found to do
that by choice which they themselves were driven to do by misery.

Thus far the Secessionists had the game all their own way, for
their dice were loaded with Northern lead. They framed their sham
constitution, appointed themselves to their sham offices, issued their
sham commissions, endeavored to bribe England with a sham offer of
low duties and Virginia with a sham prohibition of the slave-trade,
advertised their proposals for a sham loan which was to be taken up
under intimidation, and levied real taxes on the people in the name
of the people whom they had never allowed to vote directly on their
enormous swindle. With money stolen from the Government, they raised
troops whom they equipped with stolen arms, and beleaguered national
fortresses with cannon stolen from national arsenals. They sent out
secret agents to Europe, they had their secret allies in the Free
States, their conventions transacted all important business in secret
session;--there was but one exception to the shrinking delicacy becoming
a maiden government, and that was the openness of the stealing. We had
always thought a high sense of personal honor an essential element of
chivalry; but among the _Romanic_ races, by which, as the wonderful
ethnol