William Schouler, A history of Massachusetts in the Civil War: Volume 1

[47] livelihood hangs upon trade, intensifying him into a compromiser. Those guns fired at Fort Sumter are only to frighten the North into a compromise.

If the Administration provokes bloodshed, it is a trick,—nothing else. It is the masterly cunning of the devil of compromise, the Secretary of State. He is not mad enough to let these States run into battle. He knows that the age of bullets is over. If a gun is fired in Southern waters, it is fired at the wharves of New York, at the bank-vaults of Boston, at the money of the North. It is meant to alarm. It is policy, not sincerity. It means concession; and, in twelve months, you will see this Union reconstructed, with a constitution like that of Montgomery.

New England may, indeed, never be coerced into a slave confederacy. But when the battles of Abraham Lincoln are ended, and compromises worse than Crittenden's are adopted, New England may claim the right to secede. And, as sure as a gun is fired to-night at Fort Sumter, within three years from to-day you will see thirty States gathered under a Constitution twice as damnable as that of 1787. The only hope of liberty is fidelity to principle, fidelity to peace, fidelity to the slave. Out of that God gives us nothing but hope and brightness. In blood there is sure to be ruin.

The lecture ‘was interrupted by frequent hisses.’

In the preceding pages, we have sketched the position held and the measures adopted by Massachusetts during the four months immediately preceding the advent of war. Sumter had been fired upon; hostilities had commenced; nothing remained but the arbitrament of battle. By the wisdom and foresight of her Governor and Legislature, Massachusetts was better prepared for it than other loyal States. Her militia had spent the winter and spring nights in drilling, recruiting, and organizing. The requirements of Order No. 4 had been enforced. The young men who filled the ranks of the volunteer force had kept alive the military spirit and martial character of the Commonwealth. They had remained faithful to duty, despite the taunts and jeers of open enemies, and the neglect and parsimony of professed friends. They were now to give the world an exhibition of ready devotion and personal sacrifice to duty and country seldom equalled and never surpassed in any age or nation. They had been bred in the delightful ways of peace, unused to war's