Perhaps, had they foreseen the consequences of their enthusiasm, the women of both sides would have been more moderate in their advocacy of their respective creeds; but women rarely look to the end, and the feminine enthusiasts of those days were no exception to the rule. With all their strength, and whether for good or evil, there is none greater in effect, they urged their husbands and lovers and brothers, the one side to wipe out in blood, if need and opportunity were, the insult to their womanhood; the other to free the oppressed from bondage and from the tyranny shown by Southern women as well as men. The actions and utterances of each were plain to the other; the standpoints which dictated those acts and words were hidden by the dense mist of prejudice. Thus by woman's influence was precipitated the conflict which had already become almost inevitable. CHAPTER XII THE CIVIL WAR The election of Abraham Lincoln to the chief magistracy annihilated the last hope of peaceful solution of the vexed question of the time. Hope, indeed, there was in few female breasts, for with deplorable unanimity the women of our country looked forward to war as the most desirable result of all the anger that smouldered in both sections. Secession followed hard upon the election of Lincoln; the Southern senators and representatives resigned their seats in the councils of the nation; and that nation was a nation no more. Though there were many contributing circumstances, and those of the gravest, the women of our country had been the most influential cause of the rupture and its immediate result of war. They had inflamed the hearts of the men so that the few who retained some coolness of judgment and some tolerance of spirit could make no headway against the extremists. The women were now to bear the brunt of the hard-following consequences of their furious enthusiasm; but, before they began to feel those consequences in full measure, they were to enjoy a brief period of delight: that delight which their sex ever finds in the "pomp and circumstance of glorious war," until they learn something of its stern realities.