soon as the South had time to think things over, it would see that it
did not really want the quarrel. He had a queer idea that meanwhile he
could hold a few points on the margin of the Seceded States, open custom
houses on ships at the mouths of harbors, but leave vacant all Federal
appointments within the Seceded States and ignore the absence of their
representatives from Washington.(14) This marginal policy did not seem
to him a policy of coercion; and though he was beginning to see that the
situation from the Southern point of view turned on the right of a State
to resist coercion, he was yet to learn that idealistic elements of
emotion and of political dogma were the larger part of his difficulty.

Meanwhile, the upper South had been proclaiming its idealism. Its
attitude was creating a problem for the lower South as well as for the
North. The pro-slavery leaders had been startled out of a dream. The
belief in a Southern economic solidarity so complete that the secession
of any one Slave State would compel the secession of all the others,
that belief had been proved fallacious. It had been made plain that
on the economic issue, even as on the issue of sectional distrust,
the upper South would not follow the lower South into secession. When
delegates from the Georgia Secessionists visited the legislature of
North Carolina, every courtesy was shown to them; the Speaker of the
House assured them of North Carolina's sympathy and of her enduring
friendliness; but he was careful not to suggest an intention to secede,
unless (the condition that was destiny!) an attempt should be made to
violate the sovereignty of the State by marching troops across her soil
to attack the Confederates. Then, on the one issue of State sovereignty,
North Carolina would leave the Union.(15) The Unionists in Virginia
took similar ground. They wished to stay in the Union, and they were
determined not to go out on the issue of slavery. Therefore they laid
their heads together to get that issue out of the way. Their problem