Mr. Lincoln's words spoken in his inaugural address were meant to be placative to Southern sentiment and to minister to that reconciliation which from beginning to end was the sincerest desire of his soul. But they were based upon a seemingly total misconception. They constituted a refusal to recognize what the South held to be a fundamental fact. Mr. Lincoln's placative words did not placate for the reason that they completely ignored the Southern contention. They became instead, directly offensive as an assertion of the wrongfulness of secession, and its utter lack of constitutional authority. His words, the men of the South thought, claimed either too much or greatly too little. All this was only a part and a small part of the fencing by which the men in high place on either side sought in that troubled time to shift, each to the others' shoulders, responsibility for the actual and brutal beginning of a war which was clearly inevitable, and the occurrence of which had been made steadily more and more a necessity by the events of history during generations past. In the meanwhile both sides were making every possible preparation for a war that had not been declared, a war that both professed to regard as unnecessary, a war for the outbreak of which each was determined that the other and not itself should bear all the blame. The Congress at Washington had adjourned at the beginning of March without making any warlike appropriations whatsoever. Forty days of Mr. Lincoln's administration had passed without the calling of a regiment or a company or even a soldier into the field. Congress had indeed passed a resolution declaring its purpose to avoid war and its conviction that every possible concession should be made by Northern sentiment in avoidance of that terrible catastrophe. It had resolved: "That the existing discontents among the Southern people, and the growing hostility to the Federal Government among them, are greatly to be regretted; and that whether such discontents and hostility are without just cause or not, any reasonable proper and constitutional remedies and additional and more specific guarantees of their peculiar rights and interests, as recognized by the Constitution, necessary to preserve the peace of the country and the perpetuity of the Union, should be promptly and cheerfully granted." But how much did this resolution signify? It was passed by more than a two-thirds majority of a rump House of Representatives after the Southern members of that body had withdrawn from it. It therefore seemed to represent Northern and Republican sentiment. But the Senate rejected it and it came to nothing. It was a resolve that concessions should be made and that new guarantees should be given in the interest of the Union's preservation. But, the Southerners pointed out, the concessions were not made and the new guarantees were not given.