The long contest they had been waging with the anti-slavery men of the free States had blinded Southern zealots to the essential strength of their position so long as their States continued to be members of the Federal Union.

But for the constant presence of national power, and its constant exercise under the provisions of the Constitution, the South would have had no protection against the anti-slavery assaults of the civilized world.

Abolitionists from the very beginning of their energetic crusade against slavery had seen the Constitution standing in their way, and with the unsparing severity of their logic had denounced it as "a league with hell and a covenant with death." The men who were directing public opinion in the South were trying to persuade themselves, and had actually persuaded many of their followers, that the election of Lincoln was the overthrow of the Constitution, and that their safety in the Union was at an end.

They frightened the people by Lincoln's declaration that the Republic could not exist half slave, half free.

They would not hear his own lucid and candid explanation of his meaning, but chose rather to accept the most extreme construction which the pro-slavery literature and the excited harangues of a Presidential canvass had given to Mr.Lincoln's language.
SOUTHERN CONFIDENCE IN SECESSION.
The confidence of Southern men in their power to achieve whatever end they should propose was unbounded.