Meantime, the North has suspected nothing of all this. Her own devotion and loyalty to the General Government have been constantly on the increase, and she has taken it for granted that the same sentiments prevailed throughout the South. Hence the utter surprise felt at the enormous dimensions which the revolt so suddenly took on, and at the unaccountable defection of such numbers of Southern men from the army and the navy at the first call upon sectional loyalty. The question is not one of legal or constitutional rights in accordance with the literal understanding of any parchment or document whatsoever. The most triumphant arguments of President Lincoln or of anybody else have had in the past, and have now, no actual relevancy to the question at the South, and might as well be totally spared. It is purely and simply that the South are in dead earnest to have their own way, unchecked by any considerations of justice or right, or any other considerations of any kind whatsoever--less than the positive demonstration of their physical inability to accomplish their most cherished designs. Even in a technical way, the question is not most intelligibly stated as one of the right of secession; it is the bald question of Paramount Allegiance; it is so understood at the South. The whole action of the South is based upon a thorough indoctrination into a political dogma never so much as fairly conceived of at the North as existing anywhere, until events now developing themselves have revealed it, and which is not now even well understood among us. Back of this indoctrination again, and the sole cause of it, is the existence of the institution of slavery; its own instinct from the first that it had no other ground of defence or hope of perpetuation but physical force; its fears of invasion and its obstinate determination to invade.