However, I ought not to talk on this subject, for I am the merest civilian and land-lubber. My first conversation in Charleston on Secession was with an estimable friend, Northern-born, but drawing breath of Southern air ever since he attained the age of manhood. After the first salutation, he sat down, his hands on his knees, gazing on the floor, and shaking his head soberly, if not sadly. "You have found us in a pretty fix,--in a pretty fix!" "But what are you going to do? Are you really going out? You are not a politician, and will tell me the honest facts." "Yes, we are going out,'--there is no doubt of it, I have not been a seceder,--I have even been called one of the disaffected; but I am obliged to admit that secession is the will of the community. Perhaps you at the North don't believe that we are honest in our professions and actions. We are so. The Carolinians really mean to go out of the Union, and don't mean to come back. They say that they _are_ out, and they believe it. And now, what are you going to do with us? What is the feeling at the North?" "The Union must and shall be preserved, at all hazards. That famous declaration expresses the present Northern popular sentiment. When I left, people were growing martial; they were joining military companies; they wanted to fight; they were angry." "So I supposed. That agrees with what I hear by letter. Well, I am very sorry for it. Our people here will not retreat; they will accept a war, first. If you preserve the Union, it must be by conquest. I suppose you can do it, if you try hard enough. The North is a great deal stronger than the South; it can desolate it,--crush it. But I hope it won't be done. I wish you would speak a good word for us, when you go back. You can destroy us, I suppose. But don't you think it would be inhuman? Don't you think it would be impolitic? Do you think it would result in sufficient good to counterbalance the evident and certain evil?"