the Federal Government to cross the Border States, whose people in general were no believers in the right of coercion. The first attempt to do so extended the secession movement by methods which were far more openly revolutionary than the original secessions. North Carolina and Arkansas seceded in orthodox fashion as soon as President Lincoln called for volunteers after the capture of Fort Sumter. The State governments of Virginia and Tennessee concluded "military leagues" with the Confederacy, allowed Confederate troops to take possession of their States, and then submitted an ordinance of secession to the form of a popular vote. The State officers of Missouri were chased out of the State before they could do more than begin this process. In Maryland, the State government arrayed itself successfully against secession. In selecting the representative opinions for this period, all the marked shades of opinion have been respected, both the Union and the anti-coercion sentiment of the Border States, the extreme secession spirit of the Gulf States, and, from the North, the moderate and the extreme Republican, and the orthodox Democratic, views. The feeling of the so-called "peace Democrats" of the North differed so little from those of Toombs or Iverson that it has not seemed advisable to do more than refer to Vallandigham's speech in opposition to the war, under the next period. JOHN PARKER HALE, OF NEW HAMPSHIRE (BORN 1806, DIED 1873.) ON SECESSION; MODERATE REPUBLICAN OPINION; IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, DECEMBER 5, 1860. MR. PRESIDENT: I was very much in hopes when the message was presented that it would be a document which would commend itself cordially to somebody. I was not so sanguine about its pleasing myself, but I was in hopes that it would be one thing or another. I was in hopes that the President would have looked in the face the crisis in which he says the country is, and that his message would be either one thing or another. But, sir, I have read it somewhat carefully. I listened to it as it was read at the desk; and, if I understand it--and I think I do--it is this: South Carolina has just cause for seceding from the Union; that is the first proposition. The second is, that she has no right to secede. The third is, that we have no right to prevent her from seceding. That is the President's message, substantially. He goes on to represent this as a great and powerful country, and that no State has a right to secede from it; but the power of the country, if I understand the President, consists in what Dickens makes the English constitution to be--a power to do nothing at all.