England cannot recognize the Confederacy. They do not demand its instant
abolition. But if you put it in course of abatement and final abolishment
through a term of years--I do not care how many--we can intervene to some
purpose. As matters stand we dare not go before a European congress with
such a proposition."

Mr. Slidell passed it up to Richmond. Mr. Davis passed it on to the
generals in the field. The response he received on every hand was the
statement that it would disorganize and disband the Confederate Armies.
Yet we are told, and it is doubtless true, that scarcely one Confederate
soldier in ten actually owned a slave.

Thus do imaginings become theories, and theories resolve themselves
into claims; and interests, however mistaken, rise to the dignity of
prerogatives.



II


The fathers had rather a hazy view of the future. I was witness to the
decline and fall of the old Whig Party and the rise of the Republican
Party. There was a brief lull in sectional excitement after the Compromise
Measures of 1850, but the overwhelming defeat of the Whigs in 1852 and the
dominancy of Mr. Jefferson Davis in the cabinet of Mr. Pierce brought the
agitation back again. Mr. Davis was a follower of Mr. Calhoun--though it
may be doubted whether Mr. Calhoun would ever have been willing to go to
the length of secession--and Mr. Pierce being by temperament a Southerner
as well as in opinions a pro-slavery Democrat, his Administration