was put in operation and an election for president was had. The voters split into four parties; certainly not according to reason, which had long before been flung to the winds by most of them; but rather according to temperament; the more excitable and intolerant taking an extreme position; the others offering the customary political platitudes. The electoral college plan for the election of the president, which had been prescribed by the Constitution to obviate just such a catastrophe, had been long since foolishly discarded by the people in favor of a direct election by manhood suffrage. Lincoln, a then comparatively unknown man, who had been nominated in a roaring political convention, was elected President of the United States by a minority of the total vote. A few of the Southern states whose politicians were dissatisfied with the election promptly proposed to secede from the Union. They were permitted to do so and set up independent governments; the administration at Washington being as usual in the hands of men who had neither sufficient diplomacy, firmness, decision nor patriotism to deal with the situation, or with any other requiring the employment of honesty and courage. The politicians in power at Washington, as they were incapable of properly dealing with slavery, so they were incapable of properly dealing with secession. As nothing timely was done to coerce the first seceding states they were in time joined by others; the demagogic rant and newspaper clamor and abuse continued unabated on both sides, but nothing practical was done to save the situation or to preserve the Union; the seceding states were allowed four months to consummate their plans; and were permitted without molestation or hindrance to seize one fort and arsenal after another, until the enterprise of rebellion, which, originating in a few hot heads could have been summarily suppressed in December 1860 had in April 1861 resulted in the establishment of a southern armed confederacy of eleven states. Meantime the Northern Democracy looked on complacently and did nothing till the South made the dramatic blunder of firing on Fort Sumter. Sluggishness and indifference in the North were now succeeded by indignation and fury; hostilities began and lasted four years; hundreds of thousands of lives and thousands of millions of property were uselessly sacrificed, and all because among the governing politicians of the United States there had not been enough patriotic statesmanship to undertake the task of devising and enforcing a peaceable arrangement. That there was no inherent difficulty in the case, insurmountable by diplomacy, is perfectly apparent to any intelligent mind; and is almost conclusively demonstrated by the conceded fact that even after four years’ bloody strife no hopeless division between North and South existed; that the defeated Southern rank and file and their leaders, officers and generals