We see breakers through the darkness and hear the roar of the storm, and wonder anxiously whether we are to pass safely through as we have so often done before, or what great disaster may impend over us. What is to be the issue?
Back of all the anxiety and panic in the Northern States, lies a vague conviction, seldom expressed, but growing daily stronger, that this collision is much deeper than it appears on the surface; that it is what the political Cassandras have so often foretold: the final and inevitable clashing of two incompatible systems of society. And the devout mind, through the insane turmoil, and the blind and mad rushing on of the Southern States to a future fearful to contemplate, sees the final doom of Providence on a nation's sin. We would not deisre it to be so." (New York Times, editorial, December 11, 1860)
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