The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864

11

One of our English Friends, a man of well-earned eminence, says that "extracts from the contemporary literature of America seem to show, that, if the result of the Presidential election of 1860 had been different, separation would have come, not from the South, but from the North." (See Essays on Fiction, by Nassau W. Senior, p. 397.) Mr. Senior is mistaken, as much so as when he says that "a total abstinence from novel-reading pervades New England," where there is more novel-reading than in any other community of the same numbers in the world. With the exception of "the old Abolitionists," there were not five hundred disunionists in all the Free States in 1860; and the Abolitionists would neither fight nor vote, and, though possessed of eminent abilities, they had no influence. If Mr. Senior were right, we do not see how the South could be blamed for what it has done; for, if we could secede because of Mr. Lincoln's defeat, it follows that the South could secede because of his election.