He had been engaged to speak on "The Policy of Honesty." But so great had been the change in popular feeling in a city which Mr.Lincoln had carried by a vast majority, that the owner of the hall in which Mr.Curtis was to appear, warned him that a riot was anticipated if he should speak.

Its doors were closed against him.

This was less than five weeks after Mr.Lincoln was elected, and the change of sentiment in Philadelphia was but an index to the change elsewhere in the North.
The South, meanwhile, had been encouraged in the work of secession by thousands of Democrats who did not desire or look for the dissolution of the Union, but wished to plot of secession to go far enough, and the danger to the Union to become just imminent enough, to destroy their political opponents.

Men who afterwards attested their loyalty to the Union by their lives, took part in this dangerous scheme of encouraging a revolt which they could not repress.

They apparently did not comprehend that lighted torches cannot be carried with safety through a magazine of powder; and, though they were innocent of intentional harm, they did much to increase an evil which was rapidly growing beyond all power of control.