It must be fairly admitted, and distinctly borne in mind, that the South had at least good apparent reason for believing that the North would yield to any demands, and was so corrupt that it would crumble at a touch into numberless petty, warring States, while the Confederacy, firm and united, would eventually master them all, and rule the Continent. For years, leaders like President Buchanan had been their most submissive tools; and the number of men in the North who were willing to grant them everything very nearly equalled that of the Republican party. From the beginning they were assured by the press and leaders of the Democrats, or Copperheads, that they would soon conquer, and receive material aid from Northern sympathisers. And there were in all the Northern cities many of these, who were eagerly awaiting a breaking-up of the Union, in order that they might profit by its ruin. Thus, immediately after the secession of South Carolina, Fernando Wood, Mayor of New York, issued a proclamation, in which he recommended that it should secede, and become a “free city.” All over the country, Democrats like Wood were looking forward to revolutions in which something might be picked up, and not a few really spoke of the revival of titles of nobility. All of these prospective governors of lordly Baratarias avowed sympathy with the South. It was chiefly by reliance on these Northern sympathisers that the Confederacy was led to its ruin. President Lincoln found himself in command of a beleagured fortress which had been systematically stripped and injured by his predecessor, a powerful foe storming without, and nearly half his men doing their utmost to aid the enemy from within. On the 4th March, 1861, Lincoln took the oath to fulfil his duties as President, and delivered his inaugural address. In this he began by asserting that he had no intention of interfering with slavery as it existed, or of interfering in any way with the rights of the South, and urged that, by law, fugitive slaves must be restored to their owners. In reference to the efforts being made to break up the Union, he maintained that, by universal law and by the Constitution, the union of the States must be perpetual. “It is safe to assert,” he declared, “that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination.” With great wisdom, and in the most temperate language, he pointed out the impossibility of any _government_, in the true sense of the word, being liable to dissolution because a party wished it. One party to a contract may violate or break it, but it requires all to lawfully rescind it.