edge the independence of the Rebel States. Thus far the Free
States had waited with commendable patience for some symptom of vitality
in the new Administration, something that should distinguish it from the
piteous helplessness of its predecessor. But now their pride was too
deeply outraged for endurance, indignant remonstrances were heard from
all quarters, and the Government seemed for the first time fairly to
comprehend that it had twenty millions of freemen at its back, and that
forts might be taken and held by honest men as well as by knaves and
traitors. The nettle had been stroked long enough; it was time to try
a firm grip. Still the Administration seemed inclined to temporize, so
thoroughly was it possessed by the notion of conciliating the Border
States. In point of fact, the side which those States might take in the
struggle between Law and Anarchy was of vastly more import to them than
to us. They could bring no considerable reinforcement of money, credit,
or arms to the rebels; they could at best but add so many mouths to an
army whose commissariat was already dangerously embarrassed. They could
not even, except temporarily, keep the war away from the territory of
the seceding States, every one of which had a sea-door open to the
invasion of an enemy who controlled the entire navy and shipping of the
country.

The position assumed by Eastern Virginia and Maryland was of consequence
only so far as it might facilitate a sudden raid on Washington, and the
policy of both these States was to amuse the Government by imaginary
negotiations till the plans of the conspirators were ripe. In both
States men were actively recruited and enrolled to assist in attacking
the capital. With them, as with the more openly rebellious States, the
new theory of "Coercion" was ingeniously arranged like a valve, yielding
at the slightest impulse to the passage of forces for the subversion
of legitimate authority, closing imperviously so that no drop of power
could ooze through in the opposite direction. Lord de Roos, long
suspected of cheating at cards, would never have been convicted but for
the resolution of an adversary, who, pinning his hand to the table with
a fork, said to him blandly, "My Lord, if the ace of spades is not under
your Lordship's hand, why, then, I beg your pardon!" It seems to us that
a timely treatment of Governor Letcher in the same energetic way would
have saved the disasters of Harper's Ferry and Norfolk,--