Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

1 An ex-President of the United States wrote to the man who afterward became chief leader of the conspirators, saying:--“Without discussing the question of right — of abstract power to secede — I have never believed that actual disruption of the Union can occur without blood; and if, through the madness of Northern Abolitionists, that dire calamity must come, the fighting will not be along Mason and Dixon's line, merely. It will be within our own borders, in our own streets, between the two classes of citizens to whom I have referred. Those who defy law and scout constitutional obligations will, if we ever reach the arbitrament of arms, find occupation enough at home.” --Extract of a Letter from Franklin Pierce to Jefferson Davis, January 6, 1860.

After the South Carolina Ordinance of Secession was adopted, an ex-Governor of Illinois wrote to the same man, saying:--“I am, in heart and soul, for the South, as they are right in the principles and possess the Constitution. If the public mind will bear it, the seat of Government, the Government itself, and the Army and Navy, ought to remain with the South and the Constitution. I have been promulgating the above sentiment, although it is rather revolutionary. A Provisional Government should be established at Washington to receive the power of the outgoing President, and for the President elect to take the oath of office out of Slave Territory. . . . If the Slave States would unite and form a convention, they might have the power to coerce the North into terms to amend the Constitution so as to protect Slavery more effectually.” --Extract of a Letter from John Reynolds, of Belleville, Illinois, to Jefferson Davis and ex-Governor William Smith, of Virginia, dated December 28, 1860.

Many influential public journals in the Free-labor States advocated the right of secession and the wrong of “coercion.” One of these, more widely read and more frequently quoted in the South than any other, as the exponent of public opinion in the North, said:--“For far less than this [the election of Mr. Lincoln] our fathers seceded from Great Britain; and they left revolution organized in every State, to act whenever it is demanded by public opinion. The confederation is held together only by public opinion. Each State is organized as a complete government, holding the purse and wielding the sword, possessing the right to break the tie of the confederation as a nation might break a treaty, and to repel coercion as a nation might repel invasion.” --New York Herald, November 9, 1860.

At a large political meeting in Philadelphia, on the 16th of January, 1861, one of the resolutions declared:--“We are utterly opposed to any such compulsion as is demanded by a portion of the Republican party; and the Democratic party of the North will, by all constitutional means, and with its moral and political influence, oppose any such extreme policy, or a fratricidal war thus to be inaugurated.” On the 22d of February, a political State Convention was held at Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, when the members said, in a resolution :--“We will, by all proper and legitimate means, oppose, discountenance, and prevent any attempt on the part of the Republicans in power to make any armed aggressions upon the Southern States, especially so long as laws contravening their rights shall remain unrepealed on the Statute-books of Northern States, and so long as the just demands of the South shall continue to be unrecognized by the Republican majorities in these States, and unsecured by proper amendatory explanations of the Constitution.” Such utterances in the great State of Pennsylvania, and similar ones elsewhere, by the chosen representatives of a powerful party in convention assembled, encouraged the conspirators in a belief that there would be no war made upon them, and for that reason they were defiant everywhere and on all occasions.