Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-65: its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to exhibit especially its moral and political phases with the drift and progress of American opinion respecting human slavery from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. Volume I.

[458] needed; the fortifications upon the coast would have been rendered impregnable against local attacks; and, with the exception of South Carolina, no State would have withdrawn from the Union. Such a policy was strongly recommended to Mr. Buchanan's Administration, at the time, by The New York Herald; but treason in his Cabinet, and the atrocious perfidy of many others who surrounded him, prevented his acts from corresponding with the exigencies of the period. It is better, however, late than never.

* * * The time has passed for such public peace meetings, in the North, as were advocated, and might have effected some beneficial result, a few weeks since. War will make the Northern people a unit. Republicans look upon it as inevitable, and Democrats have been gradually becoming disgusted at the neglect and ingratitude with which they have been treated by a section for which they have faithfully borne the heat and burden of conflict for so many years. Fire-eaters have accustomed themselves to adopt an indiscriminate tone of hostility toward citizens of the non-slaveholding States, which would have, long ago, alienated their friends, but that the party attachment of the latter has been founded upon principles, not recklessly to be abandoned.

The policy adopted by Mr. Lincoln, as set forth in his Proclamation and his speech to the Virginia Commissioners, is, on the whole, approved by the masses of the community. It cannot harm the North eventually; and, if the damage it may inflict upon the South is to be regretted. it will be none the less well, if it secures final peace to the country.

That those who for years had zealously maintained that a simple adherence to the policy of Jefferson with regard to the exclusion of Slavery from the territories was an unwarranted and unjustifiable war upon “ the South,” impelled by “ fanaticism” and “sectional” hate, should, by the mere crashing of a few balls against the walls of a Federal fortress, be converted to an entirely different view of the past and present attitude of the combatants, was not to be expected. That the hated ‘Abolitionists’ were the real, responsible, culpable authors of the long foreseen and deeply deplored collision, was doubtless still the belief of thousands who saw no adequate reason for insisting on it at this juncture, and in whose minds indignation at the Secessionists, not only as factious and unpatriotic, but as untrue and ungrateful to their “ conservative” friends in the Free States, for the moment overbore all countervailing considerations. But, despite this undertone of demur and dissatisfaction, it is certain that the North had never before seemed so nearly and enthusiastically unanimous and determined as in devotion to the maintenance of the Union for the month or two succeeding the reduction of Fort Sumter.

Very different was the impression made on the public mind of the South by the same occurrences — strikingly diverse was the reception there accorded to the President's Proclamation.

On the evening of April 12th, the Confederates congregated at their capital, Montgomery, held high carnival over the tidings that Beauregard had, by order, opened fire that morning on Fort Sumter. As was natural, their Secretary of War, Mr. Leroy Pope Walker, was called out for a speech, and, in his response, predicted that the Confederate flag would float, before the 1st of May, over Washington City,¹ as it might, ultimately, over Faneuil Hall itself.