I think now, as an academic proposition, that, in the doctrine of
secession, the secession leaders had a debatable, if not a logical case;
but I also think that if the Gulf States had been allowed to go out by
tacit consent they would very soon have been back again seeking readmission
to the Union.

Man proposes and God disposes. The ways of Deity to man are indeed past
finding out. Why, the long and dreadful struggle of a kindred people, the
awful bloodshed and havoc of four weary years, leaving us at the close
measurably where we were at the beginning, is one of the mysteries which
should prove to us that there is a world hereafter, since no great creative
principle could produce one with so dire, with so short a span and nothing
beyond.



III


The change of parties wrought by the presidential election of 1860
and completed by the coming in of the Republicans in 1861 was indeed
revolutionary. When Mr. Lincoln had finished his inaugural address and
the crowd on the east portico began to disperse, I reentered the rotunda
between Mr. Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland, and Mr. John Bell, of Tennessee,
two old friends of my family, and for a little we sat upon a bench, they
discussing the speech we had just heard.

Both were sure there would be no war. All would be well, they thought, each
speaking kindly of Mr. Lincoln. They were among the most eminent men of the
time, I a boy of twenty-one; but to me war seemed a certainty. Recalling