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The greatest Republican boss of that day, Thurlow Weed, came out in defense of this plan. No power was arrayed more zealously on the side of peace of any kind than the power of money. It was estimated that two hundred millions of dollars were owed by Southerners to Northerners. War, it was reasoned, would cause the cancellation of these obligations.
The traditional democratic system of ideas provoked fanatical activity on the part of the Abolitionists, as the defenders of "natural rights," a kindred fanaticism in the Southerners as the defenders of legal rights, and moral indifference and lethargy on the part of the Northern Democrat for the benefit of his own local interests.
"The conversation went like this, Peggy," giggled Sally: "'Is the farm a large one that thy aunt hath taken, Friend Fairfax? 'Yes, answers he. Then Betty with a smile: 'I believe Southerners call a farm a plantation, do they not? 'Yes, he said. 'Is being with the military so much the reason thou and thy mother left Williamsburgh? 'Yes, he said again.
By the middle of the nineteenth century the more influential Southerners had come generally to regard their section of the country as a distinct social unit. The next step was inevitable. The South began to regard itself as a separate political unit. It is the distinction of Calhoun that he showed himself toward the end sufficiently flexible to become the exponent of this new political impulse.
David went to one of the big hotels patronized by all well to do Southerners of the day. At the railway station he looked about for the philosophic jailbird, but he was not to be seen. The Virginian drove to the hotel, conscious of a strange loneliness, now that the resourceful rogue was not at his elbow.
With the war itself, and the final hard-won triumph of the North, we had no immediate connection; but the Southern cause was promoted by five privateers being built in England. These armed cruisers were not professedly built for the Southerners, but under false pretences were actually equipped for war against Northern commerce.
Northerners and Southerners had found out in good season that General Scott was not in a temporizing mood; he had in the city two batteries, a few companies of regulars, 653 men, exclusive of some marines, and the corps of picked Washington Volunteers. He said that this force was all he wanted.
That this popular instinct was not at fault, we have the witness of General Kirby Smith, who told Colonel Fremantle "that McClellan might probably have destroyed the Southern army with the greatest ease during the first winter, and without much risk to himself, as the Southerners were so much over-elated by their easy triumph at Manassas, and their army had dwindled away."
She tried to suggest something like this to Miss Felicia, but that good woman had only said: "Men are queer, my dear, and these Southerners are the queerest of them all. They are so chivalrous that at times they get tiresome. Breen is no better than the rest of them." This had ended it with Miss Felicia. Nor would she ever mention his name to her again.
As soldiers the Southerners started with a superiority which the Northerners could only overtake slowly. If each people were taken in the mass, the proportion of Southerners bred to an outdoor life was higher. Generally speaking, if not exactly more frugal, they were far less used to living comfortably.
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