All the Secession leaders except Senator Benjamin declare there will be no war. He asserts that war is sure to come; and in a recent speech characterized it as "by no means an unmixed evil."
The Fire-Eaters are intensely bitter upon the border States for refusing to plunge into the whirlpool of Secession. They are bent on persuading or driving all the slave States into their ranks. Otherwise they fear—indeed, predict frankly—that the border will gradually become Abolitionized, and extend free territory to the Gulf itself. They are quite willing to devote Kentucky and Virginia to the devastation of civil war, or the embarrassment of a contiguous hostile republic, which would not return their run-away negroes.[5] But they will move heaven and earth to save themselves from any such possible contingency.
April 8.
The recent warlike movements of the National Government cause excitement and surprise. At last, the people begin to suspect that they have invoked grim-visaged war. The newspapers descant upon the injury to commerce and industry. Why did they not think of all this before?
Three Obnoxious Northerners.
It is vouchsafed to few mortals to learn, before death, exactly what their associates think of them; but your correspondent is among the favored few. The other evening, I was sitting with a Secession acquaintance, in the great exchange of the St. Charles Hotel, when conversation turned upon the southern habit of lynching people who do not happen to agree with the majority. He presumed enough upon my ignorance to insist that any moderate, gentlemanly Republican might come here with impunity.
"But," he added, "there are three men whose safety I would not guarantee."
"Who are they?"
"Governor Dennison, of Ohio, is one. Since he refused to return that fugitive slave to Kentucky, he would hardly be permitted to stay in New Orleans; at all events, I should oppose it. Then there is Andy Johnson. He ought to be shot, or hanged, wherever found. But for him, Kentucky and Tennessee would have been with us long ago. He could not remain here unharmed for a single hour."
"And the third?"