"Why have you raised all this tempest about Mr. Lincoln's election?"
Fundamental Grievance of the Rebels.
"Don't deceive yourself," he answered. "Mr. Lincoln's election had nothing to do with it, beyond enabling us to rouse our people. Had Douglas been chosen, we should have broken up the Union just as quickly. Had Bell triumphed, it would have been all the same. Even if Breckinridge had been elected, we would have seceded before the close of his term. There is an essential incompatibility between the two sections. The South stands still, while the North has grown rich and powerful, and expanded from ocean to ocean."
This was the fundamental grievance. Very liberal in his general views, he had not apparently the faintest suspicion that Slavery was responsible for the decadence of the South, or that Freedom impelled the gigantic strides of the North.
Yet his theory of the Rebellion was doubtless correct. It arose from no man, or party, or political event, but from the inherent quarrel between two adverse systems, which the fullness of time had ripened into open warfare. His "essential incompatibility" was only another name for Mr. Seward's "Irrepressible Conflict" between two principles. They have since recorded, in letters of blood, not merely their incompatibility, but their absolute, aggressive, eternal antagonism.
During the second week in April, I began to find myself the object of unpleasant, not to say impertinent, curiosity. So many questions were asked, so many pointed and significant remarks made in my presence, as to render it certain that I was regarded with peculiar suspicion.
At first I was at a loss to surmise its origin. But one day I encountered an old acquaintance in the form of a son of Abraham, who had frequently heard me, in public addresses in Kansas, utter sentiments not absolutely pro-slavery; who knew that I once held a modest commission in the Free State army, and that I was a whilom correspondent of The Tribune.
Sudden Departure from New Orleans.
He was by no means an Israelite without guile, for he had been chased out of the Pike's Peak region during the previous summer, for robbing one of my friends who had nursed him in sickness. Concluding that he might play the informer, I made an engagement with him for the next afternoon, and, before the time arrived, shook from my feet the dust of New Orleans. Designing to make a détour to Fort Pickens on my way, I procured a ticket for Washington. The sea was the safer route, but I was curious to take a final look at the interior.
On Friday evening, April 12th, I left the Crescent City. In five minutes our train plunged into the great swamp which environs the commercial metropolis of the Southwest. Deep, broad ditches are cut for draining, and you sometimes see an alligator, five or six feet long, and as large as the body of a man, lying lazily upon the edge of the green water.