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

“ [74] President should have brought his opinion to one conclusion or another, and, to-day, our country would have been safer than it is.”

Senator Hale, of New Hampshire, said that, if he understood the Message on the subject of secession, it was this:--“South Carolina has just cause for seceding from the Union; that is the first proposition. The second is, that she has no right to secede. The third is, that we have no right to prevent her from seceding. He goes on to represent this as a great and powerful country, and that no State has a right to secede from it; but the power of the country, if I understand the President, consists in what Dickens makes the English constitution to be — a power to do nothing at all. Now, I think it was incumbent on the President of the United States to point out definitely and recommend to Congress some rule of action, and to tell us what he recommended

The Senate Chamber in 1860.

us to do. But, in my judgment, he has entirely avoided it. He has failed to look the thing in the face. He has acted like the ostrich, which hides her head, and thereby thinks to escape danger.”

So thought the people. They saw great dangers, but could not comprehend the fearful proportions of those dangers. Had they done so, they would almost have despaired. They watched with intense interest the rising waves of rebellion in the Slave-labor States, and heard with alarm the roaring of their surges in the halls of Congress. Their thoughts often wandered back to an earlier period in their history, when a Chief Magistrate had the courage to check by a menace, and would have crushed by the force of arms, if it had been necessary, the foul serpent of rebellion, that appeared a generation before as a petted monster, among the politicians of South Carolina, and was exhibited to the people whenever Calhoun waved the