Up to the dread day when the news of the flag of our Union being fired upon, in Charleston harbor, the country resembled the sea in one of those calms preceding a storm. When the placidity betrays hidden and mighty currents, and overhead, in the clear sky, one divines the coursers of the tempest gathering to race in strife like that beneath. Up to Lincoln's arrival in Washington, the nest of sedition, the pro-slavery, peace-at-any-price party slackened in no efforts to retain the _statu quo_, or worse, a new State of the Southern States branching off as suckers strike from the main stem. William E. Dodge had the courage to face the wrought-up Chief Magistrate, chafed with his narrow escape from the assassins of the railroad journey from Baltimore. Said Mr. Dodge: "It is for you, Mr. President, to say whether the whole nation shall be plunged into bankruptcy (the slaves were valued as property at two thousand million dollars!); whether the grass shall grow in the streets of our commercial cities." (The balance of trade against the South to the manufacturing and supplying North was stupendous.) "Then, I say, it shall not," replied Lincoln; "if it depends upon me, the grass will not grow anywhere, save in the fields and meadows." Mr. Dodge persisted in his sordid and businesslike errand. "Then you will not go to war on account of slavery?" "I do not know what my acts may be in the future, beyond this: The Constitution will not be preserved and defended until it is enforced and obeyed in every part of every one of the United States. It must be so respected, obeyed, enforced, and defended--let the grass grow where it will!" * * * * * THE PEACE-AT-ANY-PRICE PARTY. "If there were a class of men who, having no choice of sides in the contest, were anxious to have only quiet and comfort for themselves while it rages, and to fall in with the victorious side at the end of it, without loss to themselves, their advice as to the mode of conducting the contest would be precisely such as his."--(_His_--Mr. Thomas Durant, who, in 1862, wrote a letter on behalf of the conservatives, asking to be let alone.) "He speaks of no duty--apparently thinks of none--resting upon Union men. He even thinks it injurious to the Union cause that they should be restrained in trade and passage without taking sides. They are to touch neither a sail nor a pump--live merely as passengers (deadheads, at that!)--to be carried snug and dry through the storm, and safely landed right side up! Nay, more--even a mutineer is to go untouched lest these sacred passengers receive an accidental wound."--(Letter to C. Bullitt, July 28, 1862.) * * * * * THINGS WERE TOPSY-TURVY ALOFT, TOO.