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 for four years rent the United States from end to end. But even then Colonel Eaton said it would blow over. War, civil war, was unthinkable.

So Halsey again took his cue from Uncle Hillery and went on with his studies just as though the great storm was not brewing. Yet he had begun to think for himself, and occasionally he was greatly troubled with certain aspects of the life about him and with the problems of his country.

True to the threat that had come out of the south some months earlier, South Carolina seceded from the Union in December, amid a great ringing of bells and much ceremony. In January five more states joined her. These were Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Texas followed in February. Virginia, the greatest of all the southern states and a recognized leader, did not secede until the fall of Fort Sumter.

There were fifty-five of the Virginia delegates who would not vote to secede even then, and this portion of the state was finally