In like manner, with hand of steel within a velvet glove, Mr. Lincoln
prevented the secession of Kentucky and Missouri. It was done with less
violence, but it was done, and these rich and powerful States saved to
the Union.
The swift and bloodless conquest of Maryland inspired the North with the
most grotesque conception of the war and its outcome.
The British and French Governments had immediately recognized the
Confederate States as belligerents under the terms of international law
and closed their ports to the armed vessels of both contestants. Mr.
Seward, Lincoln's Secretary of State, hastened to assure the nations of
Europe that a dissolution of the Union was an absurd impossibility. It
had never entered the mind of any candid statesman in America and should
be dismissed at once by statesmen in Europe. And yet at this time eleven
Southern States, stretching from the James to the Rio Grande, with a
population of eight millions, had by solemn act of their Legislatures
withdrawn from the Union and their armies were camping within a few
miles of the City of Washington.
In all the North not a single statesman or a single newspaper appeared
to have any conception of the serious task before them. The fusillades
of rant, passion and bombast which filled the air would have been comic
but for the grim tragedy which was stalking in their wake.
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