I phrase it so, but really I felt no stress, and I do not believe others felt it so much as the reader might think. As I look back upon it the whole state of affairs seems incredible, and to a generation remote from it must seem impossible. We had an entire section of the Republic openly seeking its dismemberment, and a government which permitted and even abetted the seizure of national property by its enemies and the devotion of its resources to its own destruction. With the worst coming, relentlessly, rapidly, audibly, visibly, no one apparently thought the worst would come; there had been so many threats of disunion before, and the measures now taken to effect it seemed only a more dramatic sort of threats. People's minds were confused by the facts which they could not accept as portents, and the North remained practically passive, while the South was passionately active; and yet not the whole South, for as yet Secession was not a condition, but merely a principle. There was a doubt with some in the North itself whether the right of disunion was not implied in the very act of union; there had long been a devoted minority who felt that disunion without slavery was better than union with slavery; and on both sides there arose sentimental cries, entreaties from the South that the North would yield its points of right and conscience, appeals from the North that the South would not secede until the nation had time to decide what it would do. The North would not allow itself to consider seriously of coercing the seceding states; and there was a party willing to bid them, with unavailing tears, "Erring sisters, go in peace," as if the seceding states, being thus delicately entreated, could not have the heart to go, even in peace. There were hysterical conferences of statesmen in and out of office to arrange for mutual concessions which were to be all on the part of the Union, or if not that then to order its decent obsequies.