If it be not slavery, where lies the partition of the interests that has led at last to actual separation of the Southern from the Northern States?... Every year, for some years back, this or that Southern state had declared that it would submit to this extortion only while it had not the strength for resistance. With the election of Lincoln and an exclusive Northern party taking over the federal government, the time for withdrawal had arrived... The conflict is between semi-independent communities which every feeling and interest the South calls for political partition, and every pocket interest the North calls for union... So the case stands, and under all the passion of the parties and the cries of battle lie the two chief moving causes of the struggle. Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this, as of many other evils... he quarrel between the North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel.