a drop of blood shed." Both these remarks were made by men who had been in some sense actors in the events to which they referred, and made after years of reflection upon the circumstances.
It does not seem to Americans of the present generation that there was ever a moment, after the election of Abraham Lincoln, when the Civil War could have been averted. It appears, in retrospect, to have been absolutely inevitable. Yet there was certainly one moment when, if President Buchanan had had the courage to apply the general views which he himself advanced in his annual message to Congress of December 3, 1860, and his special message of January 8, 1861, which explicitly denied the right of secession, a halt might have been called to the growing rebellion.
The secession movement was at first concentrated in the State of South Carolina. That State, all through the winter of 1860-1861, was
