The low throb of a distant drum came from a rampart, and the Secretary raised his head, as if the sound gave a new turn to his thoughts.
"Even the plans of ambition may crumble," he said. "Since I am speaking frankly of one thing, Captain Prescott, I may speak likewise of another. Have you ever thought how unstable may prove this Southern Confederacy for which we are spending so much blood?"
"I have," replied Prescott with involuntary emphasis.
"So have I; again I speak to you with perfect frankness, because it will not be to your profit to repeat what I say. Do you realize that we are fighting against the tide, or, to put it differently, against the weight of all the ages? When one is championing a cause opposed to the tendency of human affairs his victories are worse than his defeats because they merely postpone the certain catastrophe. It is impossible for a slave-holding aristocracy under any circumstances to exist much longer in the world. When the apple is ripe it drops off the tree, and we cannot stay human progress. The French Revolution was bound to triumph because the institutions that it destroyed were worn out; the American Colonies were bound to win in their struggle with Britain because nature had decreed the time for parting; and even if we should succeed in this contest we should free the slaves ourselves inside of twenty years, because slavery is now opposed to common sense as well as to morality."
"Then why do you espouse such a cause?" asked Prescott.
"Why do you?" replied the Secretary very quickly.
It was a question that Prescott never yet had been able to answer to his own complete satisfaction, and now he preferred silence. But no reply seemed to be expected, as the Secretary continued to talk of the Southern Confederacy, the plan upon which it was formed, and its abnormal position in the world, expressing himself, as he had said he would, with the most perfect frankness, displaying all the qualities of a keen analytical and searching mind. He showed how the South was one-sided, how it had cultivated only one or two forms of intellectual endeavour, and therefore, so he said, was not fitted in its present mood to form a calm judgment of great affairs.
"The South is not sufficiently arithmetical," he said; "statistics are dry, but they are very useful on the eve of a great war. The South, however, has always scorned mathematics; she doesn't know even now the vast resources of the North, her tremendous industrial machinery which also supports the machinery of war, and above all she does not know that the North is only now beginning to be aroused. Even to this day the South is narrow, and, on the whole, ignorant of the world."
Prescott, who knew these things already, did not like, nevertheless, to hear them said by another, and he was in arms at once to defend his native section.
"It may be as you say, Mr. Secretary," he replied, "and I have no doubt it is true that the North is just gathering her full strength for the war, but you will see no shirking of the struggle on the part of the Southern people. They are rooted deep in the soil, and will make a better fight because of the faults to which you point."