Had the South then been content with separation on the lines of "Mason and Dixon's line," I am convinced that it would have taken place without a struggle, if the position could have been defined without bloodshed. But this was what the most sagacious of the Southern leaders did not desire. It became evident that the majority in the South did not desire separation, and the leaders knew that a peaceful separation would be followed by reconstruction on something like the old lines, for the South could not stand alone industrially; so that they had not concealed their determination to invade the Middle and Western States, and carry them forcibly over to the new Confederacy, "leaving out New England." It was generally known that Pennsylvania and New Jersey were Democratic and lukewarm for the old Union, and that Ohio and the West would not resist if there were a successful beginning of a movement and a military invasion. So far as the sentiments of the politicians were concerned, the South had a very correct idea of the probabilities of the situation; what they were utterly ignorant of was the spirit of the masses in the North, which they thought to coerce easily. There they were mistaken, and there Lincoln saw his strength, and that saved the country; for, with the firing on Fort Sumter and the open insult to the flag, the Northern masses took fire, and the conflagration burned out the roots of sympathy for the South. Butler was given a command in the field; others of the same class were given commands, and the dangerous demagogue class was enlisted for the war. When I landed, the entire able-bodied population of the North was seeking to enlist, and the troops were pouring by thousands into Washington, and only the most uncertain and prudent of the Northern leaders doubted of victory, though no one dreamed what it would cost. And, looking at the corruption of American politics to-day, the venality and the indifference to the true interests of the nation of most of the men who control the political life at its most important centres, and the general tendency of our politics, it needs a serene and far-reaching faith in human progress to enable a citizen of the United States, who believes in a political ideal, to regard the sacrifices then made as having been profitable. I see things dispassionately and as an old man removed from the chance of personal gains or losses, and, but for a faith in human progress being the result of an eternal and inevitable law, I should say that the blood of that war had been wasted. It is a painful conviction to die with,--but I expect to die with it,--that generations and unparalleled disasters must pass before my country reaches the goal its founders believed to be its destiny.