entous
issue of Civil War.... You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy
the Government, while I have the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect
and defend it.'"

He ended with the one piece of rhetoric in the whole address--rhetoric
deliberately framed to stir those emotions of loyalty to the national
past and future which he knew to endure, howsoever overshadowed by anger
and misunderstanding, even in Southern breasts. "We are not enemies, but
friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it
must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory,
stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living
heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the
chorus of Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the
better angels of our nature."

But there was not much evidence of the active operation of such "better
angels" at the moment. Half the Southern States had not only seceded,
but had already formed themselves into a hostile Confederacy. They
framed a Constitution modelled in essentials on that of the United
States, but with the important difference that "We the deputies of the
Sovereign and Independent States" was substituted for "We the people of
the United States," and with certain minor amendments, some of which
were generally thought even in the North to be improvements.

They elected Jefferson Davis as President, and as Vice-President
Alexander Stephens of Georgia, who had been a Unionist, but had accepted
the contrary verdict of his State.

The choice was, perhaps, as good as could have been made. Davis was in
some ways well fitted to represent the new Commonwealth before the
world. He had a strong sense of what befitted his own dignity and that
of his office. He had a keen eye for what would attract the respect and
sympathy of foreign nations. It is notable, for instance, that in his
inaugural address, in setting forth the grounds on which secession was
to be justified, he made no allusion to the institution of Slavery.
There he may be contrasted favourably with Stephens, whose unfortunate
speech declaring Slavery to be the stone which the builders of the old
Constitution rejected, and which was to become the corner-stone of the
new Confederacy, was naturally seized upon by Northern sympathizers at
the time, and has been as continually brought forward since by
historians and writers who wish to emphasize the connection between
Sla