Over and over he repeated the deadly advice to the Nation:
"If the Cotton States shall decide that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace."
He serenely insisted:
"If eight Southern States, having five millions of people, choose to separate from us, they cannot be permanently withheld from doing so by Federal cannon. The South has as good right to secede from the Union as the Colonies had to secede from Great Britain. If they choose to form an independent Nation they have a clear moral right to do so, and we will do our best to forward their views."
Is it to be wondered at that the Southern people were absolutely clear in their conception of the right to secede if such doctrines were taught in the North by the highest authority within the party which had elected Abraham Lincoln?
If his own party leaders were boldly proclaiming such treason to the Union how could he hope to stem the tide that had set in for its ruin?
The thousands of conservative men North and South who voted for Bell and Everett demanded peace at any price. An orator in New York at a great mass meeting dared to say:
"If a revolution of force is to begin it shall be inaugurated at home! It will be just as brutal to send men to butcher our brothers of the South as it will be to massacre them in the Northern States."
The business interests of the Northern cities were bitterly and unanimously arrayed against any attempt to use force against the South. The city of New York was thoroughly imbued with Secession sentiment, and its Mayor, through Daniel E. Sickles, one of the members of Congress, demanded the establishment of a free and independent Municipal State on the island of Manhattan.
Seward had just written to Charles F. Adams, our minister to England: