To this virtual Declaration of War, under the guise of an overture looking to negotiation, settlement, and amity, Gov. Seward responded as follows :1
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often been the immediate precursor of a halcyon era of reconciliation, peace, and fraternal harmony.
It was not easy for Northern men, especially those who had never visited and sojourned at the South, to comprehend and realize the wide prevalence and intensity of anti-National sentiment and feeling in those localities whose social order, industry, and business, were entirely based on Slavery.
Neither envying nor hating the Southerners, while lamenting their delusions and resisting their exactions, it was hard indeed for many, if not most, of the citizens of the Free States to realize that we stood on the brink of a volcano whose rumblings preluded an eruption of blood as well as ashes.
Scarcely a week after Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, his Secretary of State was served with the following:
1 This reply was withheld, upon consultation with John A. Campbell, of Alabama, (then and till May 2d thereafter a Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court,) until twenty-three days subsequent to its date. Judge C. would seem to have been,even then, acting as a Confederate, despite his oath of office, though misunderstood by Gov. S. as laboring to preserve the Union.
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