Each was confronted with the demon of national discord and civil war; the moral imbecile fostered it, by his flagitious record on the Lecompton Constitution; and his pusillananimous whining, while treason was being accomplished in his Cabinet; the moral hero "nipped it in the bud," by his manly, yet simple declaration at a pro-slavery banquet, "The Union: it MUST be preserved!"

Party and social prejudice is sometimes as powerful a passion as that of patriotism; it appeared to the country that the defection of Benedict Arnold and that of Fitz-John Porter were ethically the same, the former proving harmless, and the latter, disastrous; yet the prejudice of party politics was invoked in behalf of the latter, and he was fully acquitted of the punishment for his apparent treason.

David E. Triggs commanded the U. S. army in Texas; so far as he could, he basely surrendered it to the Rebel government. James Longstreet was inoculated with the same Rebel views that Triggs was;-he was a Federal paymaster in that army; but at great risks he brought his money to Washington-settled his accounts, and then joined the Rebel army; Longstreet was a traitor to his country; but there were greater traitors in the Sons of Liberty.

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise was a political act of a radical type, and it necessarily had a moral character; i. e., it was either patriotic or non-patriotic; if it was not patriotic it was traitorous: and there are many other political acts flagitious or reprehensible, according to the standpoint whence they are viewed.

And thus it will appear that the traitors were not all in the field with butternut suits on, but there were many sleek speculators and gamblers equally traitorous in act and more so in essence.

Thomas H. Benton, a politician by instinct and a statesman by profession, originated and projected in literature this political aphorism: "The danger to our political

institutions arises from the uneasy politicians; their safety from the tranquil masses."

When Congress met in December, 1860, the Southern senators and representatives received assurances which were satisfactory to them from the Northern Democrats, that their party would not help the incoming President in any conflict which might come with the South; and some even went further and assured them that many Northern Democrats would aid the South in any prospective struggle. The then existing administration being in their interests, and having reason to believe that the flower of the West Point officers would sympathize with them, and their low estimate of Mr. Lincoln's executive abilities-all afforded good reason upon which to predict success.

Indeed, in view of all the surroundings, the Confederate leaders fully expected secession to be accomplished by peaceful methods. Seward, indeed, intimated as much; but he explained afterward that he was insincere, and that he did so because he thought that if the South had not so believed, they would never have allowed Lincoln to assume control of the government. His unaccountable and mysterious speeches to the effect that "you will hear good news within ninety days, etc., were designed to lull the Southerners into a false belief, till Lincoln could get firmly seated.

It is probably safe to say, that nine-tenths of that class of politicians in the South who aspired to national legislation were in favor of secession; the atmosphere at Washington was surcharged with it; the lobbyists and political roustabouts somehow thought that there was some advantage to accrue to them by the change; the politicians were satisfied that the wand of political power had been wrested from the South by the defeat of the Lecompton and triumph of the Wyandotte, constitution in Kansas; the issue of slavery had been submitted to the arbitrament of popular sovereignty, with every

advantage in the hands of the pro-slavery party, and slavery was defeated.

The South had "played for a high stake" and lost, and with Lucifer they exclaimed, in effect:

"What though the field be lost?

All is not lost"

for they saw, as then appeared, no insurmountable difficulty in withdrawing from the Union, and founding a government whose corner stone was African slavery, and with a firm design to revive the African slave trade.

There was something providential in the uprising of our people in April, 1861. I can think of nothing exactly like it in history. I left Chicago about February 21st and returned to it on April 15th, 1861. When I left, business was pursuing its hum-drum and unexcited course, Board of Trade men were betting against fate, merchants were behind their counters, lawyers were manacled to their technicalities, and loafers were, as usual, living somehow by their wits, with an occasional trip to the bridewell sandwiched between their normal days.

When I reached home I found all changed; old acquaintances had forage caps on, and I heard "the ear-piercing fife and spirit-stirring drum" giving out feverish and excited strains all over the business part of the city. Being soon thereafter in St. Louis, one day on the thronged levee I saw thousands of laborers all rushing madly to one point; it seemed as if every laborer joined in the excited chase; the occasion was this: An officer armed with a recruiting commission from the Governor of Illinois had ventured to the St. Louis levee and was posting up some hand-bills in the line of his mission; his welcome was as I have stated; he disappeared in a building and escaped; had he been caught, he would have been murdered in a minute. Such was the feeling among the working classes of St. Louis in April and May, 1861. A change was soon wrought, however; St. Louis was saved to the Union by the powerful influence, chiefly, of

the patriotic Germans of that city, led by Frank P. Blair, B. Gratz Brown, Emil Pretorious, Nathaniel Lyon, Samuel T. Glover and a few other heroic leaders; and the leaven of St. Louis patriotism ultimately leavened the whole state and saved it to the Union.

In July, 1862, five cavalry officers appeared before me at Cincinnati-dust-begrimed, unkempt, unwashed, demoralized. The leader said to me: "I am Col. Jacob of Kentuckycolonel of the th Kentucky (Union) cavalry-and these are my staff officers; we have pursued John Morgan as far as

and are trying to get back to Camp Nelson," etc. I did not see during the war, more unlovely looking soldiers; yet this officer was then Lieutenant-Governor of Kentucky, colonel of a Kentucky cavalry regiment, a son-in-law of Thomas H. Benton, a brother-in-law of John C. Fremont, and had one of the finest estates in Kentucky.

His wedding some few years previously at Washington, was attended by the President, Cabinet officers, foreign ministers and the elite of Washington society. To this man and such as he was our cause indebted for the loyalty of Kentucky; William Nelson, Lovell H. Rousseau, Cassius M. Clay, Richard T. Jacob, Jeremiah Boyle, Robert J. Breckenridge, Laban T. Moore and Kentuckians of that stamp formed nuclei around which the patriotism rallied, and saved this pivotal state to the Union.

In Tennessee no Southern editor opposed the election of Mr. Lincoln more vilely and with greater rancor than Parson Brownlow, of the Knoxville Whig; yet when the integrity of the government was assailed, this same unreasoning prejudice and bitterness was directed to the Rebel government, and Jeff. Davis and his government were the targets for the abuse which had been previously vented on "Old Lincoln, the Abolitionist nigger." The Tennessee patriotism was put to the severest tests; Union men were imprisoned and some of them hanged for no crime but their fealty to their government, and a strict surveillance and espionage was kept on the rest.

Several of their leaders escaped by way of Texas and Mexico; Thomas A. R. Nelson, a congressman, was imprisoned while en route to the Capitol, and released on condition he would abandon the Union cause; this he cravenly did, and published an address to the Union people, advising them to submit to the Jeff. Davis dynasty.

Even as Paris is France, so is Baltimore Maryland, and the animus was decidedly secesh at the start, but by good and watchful management and the patriotism of Gov. Hicks, Reverdy Johnson and a few other leaders, the state was kept in line, and a successful sanitary fair there during the war, attested the wonderful change in the general sentiment which had been wrought since the bloody riot of April, 1861.

No acts of President Lincoln's administration were more unsparingly condemned than his tender regard and solicitude for these Border states. His attorney-generals and his first postmaster-general were drawn from them, and his policies with regard to slavery, previous to actual emancipation, were shaped with deference to them.

But the denouement attests the wonderful patience and foresight of Abraham Lincoln; for as events were developed, the balance of power resided in these states; and, what the historian must now allow, our sagacious President knew in the dark days, when knowledge was both power and safety.

The radical difference in the genius of our people and those of absolute governments was plainly exhibited in the late struggle. In Europe, the people are not consulted or taken into consideration (except numerically) with reference to a war. The sovereigns make war or peace at their own pleasure, and simply take the people into consideration as they do the required number of dollars. Here, the people were appealed to for recruits and funds; a people's loan was our first financial basis; and-not mercenary soldiers but the people manned the guns and wielded the sabres.

The President came from the very mud-sills of our social and industrial life, and by individual effort and slow