Such were the strangely differing elements which were fermenting together in the formation of the great Commonwealth during those turbulent days from 1850 to 1860, and which were to be fused into unexpected combinations in the fierce heat of civil war. The same fermentation--minus the modifying influences of the radical Germans--was going on in all the States of the South except South Carolina, where the Middle Class hardly existed. Everywhere the Middle Class was strongly attached to the Union, and averse to Secession. Everywhere the Slaveowners, a small minority, but of extraordinary ability and influence, were actively preaching dissatisfaction with the Union, bitterly complaining of wrongs suffered at the hands of the North, and untiring in their machinations to win over or crush the leaders of those favorable to the Union. Everywhere they had the "White Trash" solidly behind them to vote as they wished, and to harry and persecute the Union men. As machinery for malevolence the "White Trash" myrmidons could not be surpassed. Criminal instincts inherited from their villain forefathers made them ready and capable of anything from maiming a Union man's stock and burning his stacks to shooting him down from ambush. They had personal feeling to animate them in this, for their depredations upon the hogs and crops of their thriftier neighbors had brought them into lifelong collisions with the Middle Class, while they had but little opportunity for resentment against the owners of the large plantations. In every State in the South the story was the same, of the Middle Class Union men being harassed at the command of the Slaveowners by the "White Trash" hounds. They had been sent into Kansas to drive out the Free State immigrants there and secure the territory for Slavery, but though backed up by the power of the Administration, they had been signally defeated by the numerically inferior but bolder and hardier immigrants from the North. 19 Force rules this world; it always has; it always will. Not merely physical force, but that incomparably higher type--intellectual force--Power of Will. It seemed that in nearly all the States of the South the Slaveowners by sheer audacity and force of will succeeded in dominating the great majority which favored the Union, and by one device or another committing them hopelessly to the rebellion. This was notably the case in Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia, where the majority repeatedly expressed itself in favor of the Union, but was dragooned into Secession.