"The North has been talking Secession for thirty years, and now that the
South is doing what they've been threatening, we wake up and try to
persuade ourselves that no such right exists in a sovereign state. Yet
we all know that Great Britain surrendered to the thirteen colonies as
sovereign states and named each one of them in her articles of surrender
and our treaty of peace. We know that there never would have been a
Constitution or a Union if the men who drew it and created the Union had
dared to question the right of either of these sovereign states to
withdraw when they wished. They didn't dare to raise the question. They
left it for their children to settle. Now we're facing it with a
vengeance.
"Our fathers only dreamed a Union. They never lived to see it. This
country has always been an aggregation of jangling, discordant,
antagonistic sections. How is this man who comes into power to-day, this
humble rail-splitter, this County Court advocate, to achieve what our
greatest statesmen have tried for nearly a hundred years and failed to
do? Seward, the man he has called to be Secretary of State, has been
here for two months, juggling with his enemies. He's a Secessionist at
heart and expects the Union to be divided----"
"Surely," Betty interrupted, "you can't believe that."
"It's true.
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