379. Hesitation in the North.--At first it seemed as if Davis was right when he said the Northerners would not fight. General Scott, commanding the army, suggested that the "erring sisters" should be allowed to "depart in peace," and Seward seemed to think the same way. The Abolitionists welcomed the secession of the slave states. Horace Greeley, for instance, wrote that if those states chose to form an independent nation, "they had a clear moral right so to do." For his part, President Buchanan thought that no state could constitutionally secede. But if a state should secede, he saw no way to compel it to come back to the Union. So he sat patiently by and did nothing.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS
CHAPTER 35
§§ 361, 362.--a. Compare the area and population of the United States in 1800 and in 1860.
b. Compare the white population of the North and the South. Were all the Southern whites slave owners?
c. Why had the control of the House passed to the free states? Did a white man in the North and in the South have proportionally the same representation in the House? Why?
d. What change in the control of the Senate had taken place? Why? Why was this change so important?
§§ 363, 364.--a. What had caused the growth of the Northern cities? Why were there so few large cities in the slave states?
b. How had the population of the states changed since 1790? What had caused the growth of the Northwest?
c. Where was there the greatest density of population? Why?