son of the South and a citizen of Kentucky. And I doubt not the time shall come, when the States of the South, with one accord, shall acknowledge their indebtedness to the commander of Fort Sumter. Nor should any man of this generation forget how great the relief he experienced when the intelligence reached him that the exposed band at Fort Moultrie, numbering scarcely one-fourth as many as the defenders of Thermopylæ, had taken refuge in Fort Sumter. Men realized then how powerless secession is and ever must be in individual States, while the general government holds fortifications in the harbors, that can neither be taken nor wisely attacked nor safely menaced. And though, in the long annals of our national life, it shall here and there be written that occasionally and temporarily passion usurped the throne of reason, and madness was installed in the seat of justice, it will also appear that the power and integrity of the nation were everywhere displayed, and the banner of the republic, without one star dimmed or one stripe erased, everywhere proclaimed the truth that only in the Union is there peace.

The world's history will furnish few chapters more interesting and instructive than a true record of the events of the last sixty days in America, - how a mighty nation found itself suddenly the victim of a widespread and dangerous conspiracy, and disseverance of territory and civil war imminent; how the government was corrupted, its chief officers engaged in treason, and, under one pretext and another, fleeing from the capital; how its treasury was drained, and its credit destroyed; how confidence was im

paired, industry paralyzed, business prostrated; then how reason resumed its sway, justice asserted its supremacy, men rallied to the support of the republic; then how the misled escaped from the meshes of traitors, the wavering became loyal, and the people, regardless of party ties and the calls of weak or treasonable leaders, announced the doctrine that not one inch of territory shall be severed from the American Union; and, finally, how, in all and through all and above all, were seen the forms and heard the voices of two heroes of two wars, born in the South and the other in the North,who rebuked treason, defended the Union, and gave assurance to the country that the army of the republic would prove true to the interests of the republic.

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We may anticipate, but we cannot fix, the judgment of posterity concerning these events; and, indeed, what more interests us is the discovery of a safe way of escape from the dangers that remain.

The first necessity of this inquiry relates to the causes, the means, and the steps by which we have become involved in the present difficulties.

At the foundation of our public and national troubles lies the institution of African slavery. All theories concerning the causes of the present disturbances rest upon this foundation.

To be sure, there was, independently of slavery, a distinctive difference between the settlers of Virginia and the country south, and the settlers of Pennsylvania, New York, and New England. But this difference could never have disturbed the harmony of our national relations.

The disturbing influence of slavery is due to the fact that it is recognized in the Constitution of the country. But slaves are not recognized as property, nor is the rightfulness of slaveholding recognized; though slavery, as an institution, is recognized as an element of political power in the government of the country. And, by this recognition, the extension of slavery to Territories that might ultimately seek admission as States into the American Union became a question of interest and of right, under the Constitution, to every citizen of the republic.

Various expedients for the limitation of this right, or the transfer of its exercise, have been devised; and all have signally failed. Whether the citizen is to be deprived of a portion of political power by the extension of slavery to a new Territory, the ultimate admission of that Territory as a slave State into the Union, a partial representation of its slaves in the House of Representatives and in the Electoral Colleges, are questions of individual personal right in the government of the country, which cannot be transferred properly to the settlers of the Territory, or to the Supreme Court, but can be disposed of only by the action of the people who are already in the Union as citizens of the several States. This democratic republican doctrine would never have been denied, had not the cotton culture assumed majestic proportions, and had not the increase of free States alarmed the ambitious leaders of the South. From the first fact is derived the significant and menacing expression, Cotton is King; and, from the latter, the conciousness of power which leads the States of the North to imitate the example of the Antonines; and,

regulating their conduct by justice, they are as little disposed to endure as to offer an injury. As between the States of this Union, free and slave, there is no conflict whatever. The duty of each and all under the Constitution is plain. If the States had been left to themselves, that duty would have been, generally, freely and faithfully performed.

But as between the claim of the slave States to extend the institution of slavery to the Territories, and the counter claim and purpose of the free States to consecrate all these Territories to freedom, there is an irrepressible conflict. The troubles between the States are due to the re-actionary influence of the revolutionary policy connected with, and the events that have transpired in, the Territories.

The policy of excluding slavery from the Territories is older than the Constitution. It dates from 1784, when proposed in the Continental Congress by Mr. Jefferson; and there has never been a moment of time since when the free States were not in favor of its exclusion. No change in this particular can be expected, and probably none is expected, by the South.

That the South has been greatly disappointed in the increase of wealth, population, and number of the free States, there is no doubt. In 1819, a writer in Niles's Register assumed, as the basis of his predictions concerning the future of the two sections, that not more than one free State would be formed out of the Illinois country, as he called the North-west, previous to 1850. In 1860, that same country, with the addition of the single State of Ohio, contained

a population equal to the free inhabitants of the fif teen slave States; while Florida, which the writer proposed to set off against the Illinois country, is in the Union, but with a single representative only in the lower house of Congress.

Each census since 1810 has disclosed the important fact, that the increase of population is chiefly in the free States; and each decennial apportionment of representation in Congress has transferred political power from the slave to the free States. Hence four decennial periods have been periods of intense excitement; and at each the friends of the Union have been alarmed for its safety. The years 1820, 1830, 1850, and 1860 are marked as crises in the affairs of the country; and we necessarily connect the revolutionary spirit manifested at each epoch with the sensible realization of the loss of political power. The vigor with which General Jackson, in 1832, wielded the authority of the government against nullification, had paralyzed South Carolina, and destroyed her men; so that, in 1840, there was neither capacity nor spirit for rebellion. Moreover, the promise of the annexation of Texas, though never reconciling the more comprehensive sagacity of the statesmen of South Carolina, yet served for the moment to divert the attention of the Southern mind from the threatening preponderance of the North. The Mexican war is more intimately connected with our present troubles than is generally believed. Many ambitious men took an active part in the field. They saw at once the wealth and the weakness of that enervated and effete republic. Especially was it apparent to those interested in