by a foreign war. With a combined veteran army of over a million of men, and a fleet more powerful than that of any European power, we could order France from Mexico, England from Canada, and Spain from Cuba, and enforce our orders if they were not obeyed. The American continent would then belong to Americans. The President at Washington would govern the New World, and the glorious dreams and prophecies of our forefathers would at length be realized."

To a proposition of such infamy of infamies, the attention of the civilized world should be called. What a commentary upon that European policy which has lavished so much of sympathy and material comfort upon the North, and, on the other hand, has rejected the cause of a people, who as they are resolute in maintaining their own rights, are as equally, indeed expressly and emphatically, innocent of any designs on the right and welfare of others! The suggestion is, that of a huge and horrible Democracy, eager to prey upon the rights of others, and to repair by plunder and outrage the cost of its feuds and the waste of its vices.

The people of the Confederacy do not easily listen to suggestions of dishonor. Yet none are more open to the cunning persuasion which wears the disguise of virtuous remonstrance and friendly interest. It is here where the Yankee peacemaker is to be resisted and unmasked.

It will be for the Confederacy to stand firm in every political conjuncture, and to fortify itself against the blandishments and arts of a disconcerted and designing enemy. It will remember that enemy's warfare. It will remember that an army, whose personnel has been drawn from all parties in the North, has carried the war of the savage into their homes. It will remember how Yankees have smacked their lips over their carnage and the sufferings of their women and little ones. It will remember how New England clergymen have advised that "rebels," men, women and children, should be sunk beneath the Southern sod, and the soil "salted with Puritanical blood, to raise a new crop of men." To hate let us not reply with hate. We reply with the superiority of contempt, the resolu tion of pride, the scorn of defiance. Surely, rather than reunite with such a people; rather than cheat the war of "independence," and make its prize that cheap thing in American

history-a paper guarantee; rather than cheat our dead of that for which they died; rather than entitle ourselves to the contempt of the world, the agonies of self-accusation, the reproof of the grave, the curses of posterity, the displeasure of the merciful God who has so long signified His providence in our endeavors, we are prepared to choose more suffering, more trials, even utter poverty and chains, and exile and death.

CHAPTER XIII.

AMERICAN IDEAS: A REVIEW OF THE WAR.

Sentimental Regrets concerning American History.-The European Opinion of 'State" Institutions.-Calhoun, the Great Political Scholar of America.-His Doctrines. Conservatism of "Nullification."-Its "Union" Sentiment.-Brilliant Vision of the South Carolina Statesman.-Webster, the Representative of the Imperfect and Insolent "Education" of New England.-Yankee Libels in the shape of Party Nomenclature.-Influence of State Institutions.--How they were Auxiliary to the Union. The Moral Veneration of the Union Peculiarly a Sentiment of the South.What the South had done for the Union.-Senator Hammond's Speech.-The States, not Schools of Provincialism and Estrangement.-The Development of America, a North and South, not Hostile States.-Peculiar Ideas of Yankee Civilization.-Ideas Nursed in "Free Schools."-Yankee Materialism.-How it has Developed in the War.-Yankee Falsehoods and Yankee Cruelties.-His Commercial Politics.-Price of his Liberties.-Ideas of the Confederates in the War.-How the Washington Routine was introduced. The Richmond Government, Weak and Negative.No Political Novelty in the Confederacy.--The Future of Confederate Ideas.Intellectual Barrenness of the War.--Material of the Confederate Army.-The Birth of Great Ideas.-The Old Political Idolators.-The Recompense of Suffering.

It has been a sentimental regret with certain European students of American History that the colonies of America, after acquiring their independence, did not establish a single and compact nationality. The philosophy of these optimists is that the State institutions were perpetual schools of provincialism, selfishness, and discontent, and that they were constantly educating the people for the disruption of that Union which was only a partial and incomplete expression of the nationality of America. These men indulge the idea that America, as a nation, would have been colossal; that its wonderful mountains and rivers, its vast stretch of territory, its teeming wealth, and the almost boundless military resources, which the present war has developed and proved, would then have deen united in one picture of grandeur, and in a single movement of sublime, irresistible progress.

These are pretty dreams of ignorance. Those who ascribe to the State institutions of America our present distractions,

and discover in them the nurseries of the existing war, are essentially ignorant of our political history. They are strangers to the doctrines of Calhoun of South Carolina-the first name in the political literature of our old government-the first man who raised the party controversies of America to the dignity of a political philosophy and illuminated them with the lights of the patient and accomplished scholar.

The great political discovery of Mr. Calhoun was this: that the rights of the States were the only solid foundation of the Union; and that, so far from being antagonistic to it, they constituted its security, realized its perfection, and gave to it all the moral beauty with which it appealed to the affections of the people. It was in this sense that the great South Carolina statesman, so frequently calumniated as "nullifier," agitator, &c., was indeed the real and devoted friend of the American Union. He maintained the rights of the States-the sacred distribution of powers between them and the general government-as the life of the Union, and its bond of attachment in the hearts of the people. And in this he was right. The State institutions of America, properly regarded, were not discordant; nor were they unfortunate elements in our political life. They gave certain occasions to the divisions of industry; they were instruments of material prosperity; they were schools of pride and emulation; above all, they were the true guardians of the Union, keeping it from degenerating into that vile and short-lived government in which power is consolidated in a mere numerical majority.

Mr. Calhoun's so-called doctrine of Nullification is one of the highest proofs ever given by any American statesman of attachment to the Union. The assertion is not made for paradoxical effect. It is clear enough in history, read in the severe type of facts, without the falsehoods and epithets of that Yankee literature which has so long defamed us, distorted our public men, and misrepresented us, even to ourselves.

The so-called and miscalled doctrine of Nullification marked one of the most critical periods in the controversies of America, and constitutes one of the most curious studies for its philosophic historian. Mr. Calhoun was unwilling to offend the popular idolatry of the Union; he sought a remedy for existing evils short of disunion, and the consequence was what

was called, by an ingenious slander, or a contemptible stupidity, Nullification. His doctrine was, in fact, an accommodation of two sentiments: that of Yankee injustice and that of reverence of the Union. He proposed to save the Union by the simple and august means of an appeal to the sovereign States that composed it. He proposed that should the general government and a state come into conflict, the power should be invoked that called the general government into existence, and gave it all of its authority. In such a case, said Mr. Calhoun, "the States themselves may be appealed to, threefourths of which, in fact, form a power whose decrees are the Constitution itself, and whose voice can silence all discontent. The utmost extent, then, of the power is, that a State acting in its sovereign capacity, as one of the parties to the constitutional compact, may compel the government created by that compact to submit a question touching its infraction to the parties who created it." He proposed a peculiar, conservative, and noble tribunal for the controversies that agitated the country and threatened the Union. He was not willing that vital controversies between the sovereign States and the general government should be submitted to the Supreme Court, which properly excluded political questions, and comprehended those only where there were parties amenable to the process of the court. This was the length and breadth of Nullification. It was intended to reconcile impatience of Yankee injustice, and that sentimental attachment to the Union which colors so much of American politics; it resisted the suggestion of revolution; it clung to the idolatry of the Union, and marked that passage in American history in which there was a combat between reason and that idolatry, and in which that idolatry made a showy, but ephemeral conquest.

The doctrine, then, of Mr. Calhoun was this: he proposed only to constitute a conservative and constitutional barrier to Yankee aggression; and, so far from destroying the Union, proposed to erect over it the permanent and august guard of a tribunal of those sovereign powers which had created it. It was this splendid, but hopeless vision of the South Carolina statesman, which the North slandered with the catch-word of Nullification; which Northern orators made the text of indignation; on which Mr. Webster piped his schoolboy rhetoric;