THE 
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JUNE, 1867. 
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THE FALL OF THE CONFEDERACY : 
A POLITICAL POST MORTEM. 
BY JOHN BAKER HOPKINS. 
(Continued from page 481.) 
CHAPTER IJ.—THE REVOLUTION WAS UNTIMELY. 
HE revolution was a surprise. The fathers of the 
republic dreaded the growth of sectionalism and the 
disruption of the Union, but if they could have foreseen 
the condition of affairs in 1860 no such fear would have 
marred their joy in the prospective glory and greatness of 
their beloved country. Many writers had prophesied the 
break up of the Union, but if we investigate these predic- 
tions we find they had no better foundation than the dogma 
that mortal things must change, and that nations, like men, 
must grow old and decay. On this assumption, over and 
over again, the decline of England has been announced, 
but though such prognostications irritate the timid, they do 
not obtain credence, except with those who maliciously 
wish the evil to come to pass. Secession had often been 
threatened both by North and South, but everyone knew 
that these threats were rhetorical exaggerations, for even 
whilst they were being bandied about in the Halls of Con- 
gress, on the platform, and in the press, all parties and 
sections were zealously, jealously, and it often seemed un- 
scrupulously, striving to aggrandise the Republic. The 
people of the North and of the South, of the East and of 
the West, equally regarded America as the heritage of the 
Union, and looked forward to the day when the lord of the 
White House would be the chief magistrate of a Continent. 
But however uncertain might seem the future, however 
apparently probable that ultimately North and South would 
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