538 The Fall of the Confederacy. 
Another ill result of this precipitancy was to discredit 
the motive of the Southern people. It was alleged that the 
revolution was necessary for the defence of the monetary 
interests of the South. It was alleged that the manufac- 
turers of the East would, by a protective tariff, impose upon 
the agricultural South. But was not the West agricultural as 
well as the South? Are not the manufacturers a minority, 
even in the East? If, then, it was a question of free trade, 
it was by agitation and not by revolution that the South 
should have proceeded. In respect to fiscal policy, the in- 
terests of the South and of the West were so identical that 
it was expected the West would side with the South. But 
every one knows that it was not a fiscal question that had 
brought about the Secession conspiracy. It was the negro 
slavery question. The original promoters of Secession did 
not apprehend any attack upon the institution as it existed 
in the then Slave States bit they feared that the area of 
negro slavery would be limited to the then Slave States, 
and they determined to resist a policy they deemed fatal 
to an institution which they.regarded as essential to the 
prosperity of the country. Now the mass of the people in 
the South were personally indifferent to the institution. 
The slaveholders constituted a small minority, and the ma- 
jority had no more direct interest in the institution of negro 
slavery than the bulk of the people of England have in the 
law of primogeniture. Not that the people of the South 
were prone to abolitionism. They had always lived in 
the midst of negro slavery and had no thought of its 
being an evil institution. Therefore, in one sense they 
fought for the defence of negro slavery but they did so 
because they were persuaded that any attack upon the 
institution was an attack upon the rights of the South. 
They fought for negro slavery because they were instructed 
that the defence thereof meant the defence of their political 
independence. Hence, when Mr. Lincoln offered to receive 
back into the Union with the institution of negro slavery 
intact any State that would lay down arms by the Ist of 
January, 1863, not one of the States accepted the offer. 
Why? Because they were bent on independence and not 
on the defence of negro slavery ; just as the North, which 
accomplished the work of emancipation was intent upon 
the preservation of the Union and would at any time in 1863 
have received back the South with the institution of negro 
slavery as it was in 1861. But because.no other cause could. 
be found for revolution it was naturally assumed that the 
