do not grow wiser as they grow older.  So in the two Congresses the notables talked,—­in the one, those who ought to be shelved, in the other, those who were shelved already,—­while those who were too thoroughly shelved for a seat in either addressed Great Union Meetings at home.  Not a man of them but had a compromise in his pocket, adhesive as Spalding’s glue, warranted to stick the shattered Confederacy together so firmly, that, if it over broke again, it must be in a new place, which was a great consolation.  If these gentlemen gave nothing very valuable to the people of the Free States, they were giving the Secessionists what was of inestimable value to them,—­Time.  The latter went on seizing forts, navy-yards, and deposits of Federal money, erecting batteries, and raising and arming men at their leisure; above all, they acquired a prestige, and accustomed men’s minds to the thought of disunion, not only as possible, but actual.  They began to grow insolent, and, while compelling absolute submission to their rebellious usurpation at home, decried any exercise of legitimate authority on the part of the General Government as Coercion,—­a new term, by which it was sought to be established as a principle of constitutional law, that it is always the Northern bull that has gored the Southern ox.

During all this time, the Border Slave-States, and especially Virginia, were playing a part at once cowardly and selfish.  They assumed the right to stand neutral between the Government and rebellion, to contract a kind of morganatic marriage with Treason, by which they could enjoy the pleasant sin without the tedious responsibility, and to be traitors in everything but the vulgar contingency of hemp.  Doubtless the aim of the political managers in these States was to keep the North amused with schemes of arbitration, reconstruction, and whatever other fine words would serve the purpose of hiding the real issue, till the new government of Secessia should have so far consolidated itself as to be able to demand with some show of reason a recognition from foreign powers, and to render it politic for the United States to consent to peaceable secession.  They counted on the self-interest of England and the supineness of the North.  As to the former, they were not wholly without justification,—­for nearly all the English discussions of the “American Crisis” which we have seen have shown far more of the shop-keeping spirit than of interest in the maintenance of free institutions; but in regard to the latter they made the fatal mistake of believing our Buchanans, Cushings, and Touceys to be representative men.  They were not aware how utterly the Democratic Party had divorced itself from the moral sense of the Free States, nor had they any conception of the tremendous recoil of which the long-repressed convictions, traditions, and instincts of a people are capable.