"This hostility has borne its natural fruit in open attack. A peaceful Virginia village has been assailed by armed men, its citizens shot down while defending their homes, and the summons given for servile insurrection with all its horrors. The leader in this crime, justly condemned and executed under Virginia's laws, has been widely honored throughout the North as a hero and martyr. By the light of that applause we must interpret the real feeling of the North, and its probable future course toward us. "The Presidential election has now been won by a party whose avowed principle is the restriction of slavery, while its animating spirit is active hostility to slavery. We cannot trust the Republican party in its profession of respect for the Constitution. Even in its formal declaration it ignores a Supreme Court decision, and advances a revolutionary doctrine as to slavery in the territories. Its elected candidate has declared that 'this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.' The party's only reason for being is opposition to slavery, and there is every probability that this opposition will, with growing power and opportunity, be directed against the system as it now exists in our Southern States. "The spirit of the American Union is dissolved already, when its chief magistrate has been elected by the votes of one section and by a party animated solely by hostility to the industrial and social system of the other section. The formal bond of the Union can hereafter be only an instrument to harass and destroy our liberties. We therefore propose that that bond be at once and finally cancelled. It is and has been from the beginning the right of any State to withdraw from the national partnership at its own pleasure. We call on our brethren of the South to take prompt action for the deliberate, legal and solemn withdrawal of their States from the Union, and their organization in a new Confederacy." So in effect spoke the leading spirits of the Gulf and Cotton States as soon as Lincoln was elected in November, 1860. Less promptly, coming only gradually into unison, but with growing clearness and emphasis, spoke the dominant spirit of the North in the months between Lincoln's election and inauguration. This in substance was the Northern reply to the Secessionist:-- "We deny that we have violated the Constitution, that we have wronged you, or that we intend to wrong you. We have taken no advantage of you beyond the legitimate victories of political controversy. We are loyal to the Constitution, and to that which is deeper and higher than the Constitution,--the spirit of American nationality.