It was at this time that the conspiracy, which had been preparing in earnest for thirty years, and which the North for as many years refused to suspect, had burst forth. South Carolina had declared that if Lincoln was elected she would secede, and on the 17th December, 1860, she did so, true to her word if not to her duty. In quick succession six States followed her, “there being little or no struggle, in those which lay upon the Gulf, against the wild tornado of excitement in favour of rebellion.” “In the Border States,” says Arnold--“in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Missouri--there was, however, a terrible contest.” The Union ultimately triumphed in Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, while the rebels carried Tennessee with great difficulty. Virginia seceded on April 17th, 1861, and North Carolina on the 20th of May. Everything had for years been made ready for them. President Buchanan, who preceded Lincoln--a man of feeble mind, and entirely devoted to the South--had either suffered the rebels to do all in their power to facilitate secession, or had directly aided them. The Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, who became a noted rebel, had for months been at work to paralyse the Northern army. He ordered 115,000 muskets to be made in Northern arsenals at the expense of the Federal Government, and sent them all to the South, with vast numbers of cannon, mortars, ammunition, and munitions of war. The army, reduced to 16,000 men, was sent to remote parts of the country, and as the great majority of its officers were Southern men, they of course resigned their commissions, and went over to the Southern Confederacy. Howell Cobb of Georgia, afterwards a rebel general, was Secretary of the Treasury, and, as his contribution to the Southern cause, did his utmost, and with great success, to cause ruin in his department, to injure the national credit, and empty the treasury. In fact, the whole Cabinet, with the supple President for a willing tool, were busy for months in doing all in their power to utterly break up the Government, to support which they had pledged their faith in God and their honour as gentlemen. Linked with them in disgrace were all those who, after uniting in holding an election for President, refused to abide by its results. On the 20th Nov., 1860, the Attorney-General of the United States, Jer. S. Black, gave, as his aid to treason, the official opinion that “Congress had no right to carry on war against any State, either to prevent a threatened violation of the Constitution, or to enforce an acknowledgment that the Government of the United States was supreme;” and to use the words of Raymond, “it soon became evident that the President adopted this theory as the basis and guide of his executive action.”