The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864, page 219 by Various Authors
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sidency, and that he would be supported by the leaders of the Northern Democracy, who would take their followers with them along the road that led to the Union's dissolution. South Carolina, rabid as she was, did not rebel until the last Democratic President of the United States had publicly assured her that he would do nothing to prevent her from reducing the Calhoun theory to practice; and had she not rebelled, not another State would have left the Union. The opportunity that she could not get under President Jackson she obtained under President Buchanan,--and she did not hesitate to make the most of that opportunity, all indeed that could be made of it, well knowing that it could not be expected again to occur.
With these facts before them, the American people should be prepared for further rebellious action on the part of that faction whose creed it is that rebellion is right when directed against the ascendency of their political opponents. They have done their utmost to assist the Rebels all through the war, and the great riots in New York last year were the legitimate consequences of their doctrine, if not of their labors. We know that organizations hostile to the Union have been formed in the West, and that there was to have been a rising there, had any striking successes been achieved by the Confederate forces during the last six months. Nothing but the vigor and the victories of Grant and Sherman and Farragut saved the North from becoming the scene of civil war in 1864. Nothing but the vigor and union of the people in their political capacity can keep civil war from the North hereafter. The followers of the Seymours and other ultra Democrats of the North are not more loyal than were nine-tenths of the Southern people in 1860. Few of them now think of becoming rebels, but they would as readily rebel as did the Southern men who have filled the armies of Lee and Beauregard, and who have poured out their blood so lavishly to destroy that nation which owes its existence to the labors of Southern men,