614 The Fall of the Confederacy. 
Unionism, is not surprising. Were they to believe in an 
effect without a cause? The only surprise is that a revolu- 
tion so rudely torn from the womb of time survived the 
hour of its birth. But, contrary to all reasoning, expecta- 
tion, and experience, it did so. 
There was a fair prospect of a pacific accomplishment of 
secession. The Democrats, smarting under political defeat, 
being devoted to the extreme doctrine of State Rights, 
regarding secession as only temporary, and the temporary 
disruption as domestic, substituting for a while a Union of 
Federations in lieu of a Union of States, were in favour 
of letting the South depart in peace. The Abolitionists 
dreaded nothing so much as continued Union with negro 
slavery, and not foreseeing that the defence of the Union 
would bring about emancipation, were not vehemently op- 
posed to secession. All parties deprecated any act of coer- 
cion that might compel the South to seek European inter- 
vention, and therefore all dealt tenderly with secession, and 
those who a few weeks later were called rebels and traitors 
were openly represented by agents in Washington. The 
situation was so critical that the cause of the Union seemed 
hopeless. Then the Confederate administration bombarded 
Fort Sumter, and the Union was saved from dissolution at 
least without a struggle. 
The final and crowning blunder was the non-emancipation 
of the negroes. By maintaining the institution of negro 
slavery the Confederacy lost a third of its military strength, 
it gave East and West a common and exciting cause of 
enmity against the Confederacy, and it prevented the sym- 
pathy of Europe ripening into intervention. The policy of 
non-emancipation did more than that, for it gave strength 
both at home and abroad to the North. 
Such were the immediate causes of the fall of the Con- 
federacy. What is the verdict? Not /élo de se, for however 
unwise and perverse the policy of the Confederate ad- 
ministration, their desire was to set up and not to destroy 
the Confederacy. Perhaps the facts of the case suggest 
inevitably this verdict :—“ The Confederacy was killed, or 
its death was hastened, by the perverse policy of the Con- 
federate administration.” We cannot gainsay the justice 
of that conclusion, yet we prefer the open verdict of 
“Died from natural causes.” We prefer it because, though 
. the Confederacy died early, its death was not, in one sense, 
premature, for the work that the. Confederacy had to do 
_was done. ; 
