[128] Toombs declared, as Lincoln had said, that what was wanted was that the North should _call slavery right_. Wilson, _Rise and Fall of Slave Power_, iii. 76. Stephens declared the "corner-stone" of the new government to be "the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery ... is his natural and normal condition;" and said that it was the first government "in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." N. and H. iii. 203; and see his letter to Lincoln, _ibid._ 272, 273. Mississippi, in declaring the causes of her secession, said: "Our position is thoroughly identical with the institution of slavery,--the greatest material interest in the world." N. and H. iii. 201. Senator Mason of Virginia said: "It is a war of sentiment, of opinion; a war of one form of society against another form of society." Wilson, _Rise and Fall of Slave Power_, iii. 26. Green of Missouri ascribed the trouble to the "vitiated and corrupted state of public sentiment." _Ibid._ 23. Iverson of Georgia said it was the "public sentiment" at the North, not the "overt acts" of the Republican administration, that was feared; and said that there was ineradicable enmity between the two sections, which had not lived together in peace, were not so living now, and could not be expected to do so in the future. _Ibid._ 17. [129] Historians generally seem to admit that the South had to choose between making the fight now, and seeing its favorite institution gradually become extinct. [130] Sometimes, though very rarely, the word was used. [131] See Lincoln's message to Congress, July 4, 1861. CHAPTER VIII THE BEGINNING OF WAR