Thus, even before its outbreak, the conspiracy contrived to degrade and despoil the Government, so as to secure free course for the projected rebellion. The story seems incredible. But it was not enough to disperse the army, to scatter the navy, to abandon forts, to disarm the Free States, and to rob the Treasury. The President of the United States, solemnly sworn to execute the laws, was won into a system of inactivity amounting to practical abdication of his great trust. He saw treason plotting to stab at the heart of his country, saw conspiracy, daily, hourly, putting on the harness of rebellion, but, though warned by the watchful general-in-chief, he did nothing to arrest it, standing always, “like a painted Jove, With idle thunder in his lifted hand.”[214] Ay, more; instead of instant lightnings, smiting and blasting in their fiery crash, which an indignant patriotism would have hurled, he nodded sympathy and acquiescence. No page of history is more melancholy, because nowhere do we find a ruler who so completely abandoned his country: not Charles the First in his tyranny, not Louis the Sixteenth in his weakness. Mr. Buchanan was advanced to power by Slave-Masters, who knew well that he could be used for Slavery. The Slaveholding conspirators were encouraged to sit in his Cabinet, where they doubly betrayed their country, first by evil counsels, and then by disclosing what passed to distant Slaveholding confederates. The sudden act of Major Anderson, in removing from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter, and the sympathetic response of an aroused people, compelled a change of policy, and the Rebellion received its first check. After painful struggle, it was decided at last that Fort Sumter should be maintained. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of that decision, which, I believe, was due mainly to an eminent Democrat,--General Cass. This, at least, is true: it saved the national capital. Meanwhile the conspiracy increased in activity, mastering State after State, gathering its forces and building its batteries. The time had come for the tragedy to begin. “At Nottingham,” says the great English historian, speaking of King Charles the First, “he erected his royal standard, the open signal of discord and civil war throughout the kingdom.”[215] The same open signal now came from Charleston, when the conspirators ran up the Rattle-Snake flag, and directed their wicked cannonade upon the small, half-famished garrison of Sumter.