In that
section of the country there was for a few months a spectacle which has
no parallel in history. There was paralysis, there was disintegration;
worse than either, there was an utter lack of straight sense and clear
thought. There were politicians, editors, writers, agitators, reformers
in multitudes whose reiteration of their moral convictions, whose
intense addresses and uncompromising articles, had for years been
bringing about precisely this event; yet when it came, it appeared that
no one of them had contemplated it with any realizing appreciation, no
one of them was ready for it, no one of them had any sensible, practical
course of action to recommend. There was no union among them, no
cohesion of opinion or of purpose, no agreement of forecast; each had
his own individual notion as to what could be done, what should be done,
what would be the train of events. Politically speaking, society was a
mere parcel of units, with topical proximity, but with no other element
of aggregation. The immensity of the crisis seemed to shake men's minds;
the enigma of duty involved such possibilities, in case of a wrong
solution, that the wisest leaders, becoming dazed and overawed, uttered
the grossest follies. Men who had been energetic and vigorous before,
when they were pursuing a purpose, who became so again afterward, when
the distinct issue had taken shape, now lost for a time their
intellectual self-possession.
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