and subsequently, when his own State
became involved in the quarrel, resigned his commission. Later he
accepted the chief command of the Virginian forces and became the most
formidable of the rebel commanders. Yet with the institution, zeal for
which is still so largely thought to have been the real motive of the
South, he had no sympathy. Four years before the Republican triumph, he
had, in his correspondence, declared Slavery to be "a moral and
political evil." Nor was he a Secessionist. He deeply regretted and so
far as he could, without meddling in politics--to which, in the fashion
of good soldiers, he was strongly averse--opposed the action which his
State eventually took. But he thought that she had the right to take it
if she chose, and, the fatal choice having been made, he had no option
in his own view but to throw in his lot with her and accept his portion
of whatever fate might be in store for her armies and her people.

Virginia now passed an Ordinance of Secession, and formed a military
alliance with the Southern Confederacy. Later she was admitted to
membership of that Confederacy, and the importance attached to her
accession may be judged by the fact that the new Government at once
transferred its seat to her capital, the city of Richmond. The example
of Virginia was followed by the other Southern States already
enumerated.

There remained four Southern States in which the issue was undecided.
One of them, Delaware, caused no appreciable anxiety. She was the
smallest State in the Union in population, almost the smallest in area,
and though technically a Slave State, the proportion of negroes within
her borders was small. It was otherwise with the three formidable States
which still hung in the balance, Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland. That
these were saved to the Union was due almost wholly to the far-sighted
prudence and consummate diplomacy of Abraham Lincoln.

Missouri was the easiest to hold. Geographically she was not really a
Southern State at all, and, though she was a Slave State by virtue of
Clay's Compromise, the institution had not there struck such deep roots
as in the true South. The mass of her people were recruited from all the
older States, North and South, with a considerable contingent fresh from
Europe. Union feeling was strong among them and State feeling
comparatively weak. Her Governor, indeed, was an ardent Southern
sympathizer and returned a haughty and defiant reply to Lincoln