Throughout the war, the North believed in the existence of a strong Union party at the South. Under the peculiar circumstances of our trip, it would seem natural that, if there was such a party, we should have found traces of it. Individual Unionists there were, of course; noble men, who braved every threat, and stood faithful to the last. But, speaking of a Union party only as comprising numbers of men sufficient to form an appreciable element in political or social movements, I was ready, on our return, to affirm that, save in East Tennessee and small portions of North Carolina, there was no such party in the South. In many of the States the opponents of secession had been in a majority in 1860. But the movement once started, blood once drawn, the honor of the States once involved, secession swept everything before it. The avalanche begins in a little snow-bank. Once set in motion, whatever stands in the way serves only to swell its bulk and augment its power. Men who had voted against secession at the risk of their lives, again and again told me that they were soon forced to go with the current. The son of one had volunteered, “and, of course, sir, my prayers and hopes went with my boy and the cause in which he was engaged.” The property of another was in danger, and to save it he volunteered. At Bull Run his bosom friend fell by a Yankee ball; from that moment he “was a Rebel, heart and soul.” “My family, friends, neighbors, old political leaders, all went with the State,” said another. “I knew it was madness, but I could not desert them, and I would not be a tory.” Men like Governor Brown and Alex. H. Stephens were thought at the North to be leaders of a Union party. Whatever their private views, neither they nor any other prominent men dared permit themselves to be regarded in that light at home. “They were opponents of the Administration, not of the war,” as a Georgian very earnestly explained. “They opposed Mr. Davis, not because he made war at all, but because he did it with less vigor and skill than they demanded.” The belief was prevalent at the North, that, when secession failed, the decimated and beggared people would turn in bitter rage upon the leaders who had brought them to such a pass. But from Fortress Monroe and Key West to Cairo, I never heard one solitary indication of such a feeling. Many men criticised Mr. Davis’ conduct of the war with severity; but wherever an expression was made at all, it was one of sympathy for his fate, and of indignation at the thought of awarding him any other punishment than was allotted to the humblest follower in the cause. “He was but our agent,” they said. “He only did our bidding. Our fault with him was that he didn’t do it as skillfully as we expected.”