19 Every channel in her body sent the black blood rushing to her brain, and congested it with fatal suggestions. How plain it is now that the temporizing policy, which was always the trait of half-living republicanism, was the instrument in the hands of Mr. Buchanan to conjure liberty out of republicanism, decision out of uncertainty, and draw the bolt out of the gates of the great North-wind. History will return thanks that the Southern forts were left without their garrisons, seeing that God meant to garrison them with liberty. At first it seems clear that there was a moment when the whole Revolution was in the power of a few hundred men to be judiciously posted where slavery understood itself the best, and was throbbing with evil purposes. No, we do wrong to say there was such a moment. If such a moment had been essential or possible, it would have become actual. But the strength of slavery appeared just as much in the weakness of Mr. Buchanan as in the determination of Jefferson Davis; it was against the divine logic that a few hundred men should tear a glorious page of history. Seeds are not ready to germinate in April, but after the first thunder how they swell and burst their flinty husks and send up shoots like sword-blades over all the soil! Liberty was waiting for the thunder. The awful-looking cloud that blotted out half her sky and the stars which ought to shine there, gathered and gloomed continually, rolling in upon itself as if to concentrate and fiercely hearten, till the passion that reddened its great edges could not bide there another moment, and forth it sprung. The lightning was neither premature nor disastrous. It subserved the needs of liberty, which had lain frost-bound through a long northern winter, waiting for a genial hour. But green shoots do not make a harvest. There is never a moment in the summer when the corn might stop growing, with the delusion that it was ready to furnish food for man. What moment would you select to break off your corn-tops, expecting to leave full ears upon the stumps to ripen in the sun,—when the joints send forth their ribands, or when the mealy tassels come, or when the first silk is spun out of the future husk ? Summer’s sun is a growing sun, fierce and almost intolerable. Autumn points with long shadows to the ripening hours.
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