"
And here the ingenuous reader may very naturally ask, What became of all
this feeling? How was it that, in the course of a few weeks, it had
disappeared like a morning mist? Where was the host of men who had
declared that an army marching to invade the Southern States should
first pass over their dead bodies? No _new_ question had arisen--no
change in the attitude occupied by the seceding States--no cause for
controversy not already existing when these utterances were made. And
yet the sentiments which they expressed were so entirely swept away by
the tide of reckless fury which soon afterward impelled an armed
invasion of the South, that (with a few praiseworthy but powerless
exceptions) scarcely a vestige of them was left. Not only were they
obliterated, but seemingly forgotten.
I leave to others to offer, if they can, an explanation of this strange
phenomenon. To the student of human nature, however, it may not seem
altogether without precedent, when he remembers certain other instances
on record of mutations in public sentiment equally sudden and
extraordinary. Ten thousand swords that would have leaped from their
scabbards--as the English statesman thought--to avenge even a look of
insult to a lovely queen, hung idly in their places when she was led to
the scaffold in the midst of the vilest taunts and execrations. The case
that we have been considering was, perhaps, only an illustration of the
general truth that, in times of revolutionary excitement, the higher and
better elements are crushed and silenced by the lower and baser--not so
much on account of their greater extent, as of their greater violence.
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