So much for the broad causes without which there could have been no Civil War in America. We have now to sketch the process by which the fuel was kindled. It will be remembered that the President elected in November does not enter upon his office for nearly four months. For that time, therefore, the conduct of government lay in the hands of President Buchanan, who, for all his past subserviency to Southern interests, believed and said that secession was absolutely unlawful. Several members of his Cabinet were Southerners who favoured secession; but the only considerable man among them, Cobb of Georgia, soon declared that his loyalty to his own State was not compatible with his office and resigned; and, though others, including the Secretary for War, hung on to their position, it does not appear that they influenced Buchanan much, or that their somewhat dubious conduct while they remained was of great importance. Black, the Attorney-General, and Cass, the Secretary of State, who, however, resigned when his advice was disregarded, were not only loyal to the Union, but anxious that the Government should do everything that seemed necessary in its defence. Thus this administration, hitherto Southern in its sympathies, must be regarded for its remaining months as standing for the Union, so far as it stood for anything. Lincoln meanwhile had little that he could do but to watch events and prepare. There was, nevertheless, a point in the negotiations which took place between parties at which he took on himself a tremendous responsibility and at which his action was probably decisive of all that followed.