sacrifice. Slavery as the occasion of the war was rarely alluded to in these meetings; the issues of the opening contest rose far above any question of domestic policy, constitutional law, or party politics.

When Sumter surrendered, Lewis Cass, who in the cabinet of President Buchanan had done all that was in his power to hold every state to its place in the Union, was living in retirement at Detroit. A great public meeting was convened in that city on one of the dark days which followed, and he was called upon as its most distinguished citizen to preside. Naturally his mind reverted to the day, nearly fifty years before, when near the very spot where the meeting was being held, an American general, who had lost the courage and vigor of his youth, had subjected the people to dishonorable capitulation. The venerable statesman was himself now old and feeble; youthful ardor had given way to some degree of despondency; but he had lost nothing of his attachment to the Union, and he thanked God as he took the chairman's seat that the flag of the Union still floated unmutilated above him. His remarks were brief, but they expressed the general sentiment and determination of the people of the city and of the State. "It is the duty of all zealously to support the government in its efforts to bring this unhappy civil war to a speedy and satisfactory conclusion, by the restoration in its integrity of

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that great charter of freedom bequeathed to us by Washington and his compatriots." The address was brief but significant, and there was inspiration for others in the fact that the venerable statesman did not tolerate the thought of a divided country.

The history of Michigan in the war is part of the general history of the country, and nothing need be said of it here but that the State did its full duty, putting more than ninety thousand men into the field, of whom many thousand were left to rest in soldiers' graves. The four years' war was unsettling and demoralizing, as all wars necessarily are, and its effects were perceived in a speculating feeling in business circles which gradually extended so as to bring within its mischievous vortex classes of persons who had never ventured before. They were perceived also in a weakening of the sense of the sacredness of life and of private property; and in some degree of the family sentiment also; and in a great increase of crimes of all sorts, but especially of crimes of violence. Nowhere in the Union were the rejoicings more hearty when the news came that Richmond was in the hands of the federal authorities, and that the preservation of the Union was made certain. A task which had seemed to other nations too desperate to be undertaken had been accomplished, and in the process of accomplishment the great domestic evil that had been the occasion of the war had been overthrown completely and forever.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE STATE AND THE NEW UNION.

THE great civil war had been fought on the part of the government to preserve the Union, and for no ulterior purpose whatever. "The constitution as it is and the Union as it was " was the rallying cry of the people, and the platform upon which Mr. Lincoln in his inaugural address proposed to found the policy of his administration. The acts of secession being deemed altogether void, the government would endeavor to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to it in all the states, and to enforce everywhere its laws, and thereby bring the people everywhere to a recognition and observance of federal authority and of their duties in respect to it. The political departments of the federal government disclaimed altogether the right to interfere with any constitutional exercise of state authority, even in respect to the institution of slavery, though slavery had become the occasion of civil war. Loyal parties, whatever had been their political affiliations before, agreed in pledging devotion to the constitution as it had been formulated and adopted at the

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beginning, and their purpose to maintain it unimpaired.

The peculiar excellence of the American constitutions was supposed to consist in the fact that they had been deliberately framed as written charters of government, so that they expressed all that was within the intent of the framers, and would stand as agreed upon without being subject to that gradual modification and change which is an inherent quality when the constitution is unwritten. In the latter case, as in the conspicuous instance of the constitution of England, there will be gradual building up and growth, which may at the time be wholly imperceptible, and only apparent in results; but the written instrument comes into existence with the understanding and purpose that its several paragraphs and provisions shall mean forever exactly what they mean when adopted; and if a change is to take place in the constitution, it must be brought about by the steps which in the instrument itself are provided for, and must consist in such modification of the language and provisions of the instrument, or of such emendations or additions as shall be formally and deliberately made. By this means we are supposed to have at all times a written instrument which embodies the whole constitution; and when we reach a proper interpretation of the powers it confers and the limitations it imposes upon those powers, as they stood in the minds of the people when

adopting it, we are to give effect to that interpretation, in whatever may be done under the constitution at any time in the future.

Such is the theory underlying American governments. But the theory can be true only in the most general sense. No instrument can be the same in meaning to-day and forever, and in all men's minds. Its interpretation must take place in the light of the facts which preceded and led to it; in the light of contemporaneous history, and of what was said by the actors and the ends they had in view. And as men will differ upon facts and differ in mental constitution, so will they differ in interpretation; and in the case of a written constitution, the divergences are certain to increase when it comes to receive practical application. And if at any time the people are subjected to a great constitutional crisis, they are not thereafter precisely the same in ideas, sentiments, desires, hopes, and aspirations that they were before their experience works changes in their views and in their habits of thought, and these may be so radical that they seem altogether a new people. But as the people change, so does their written constitution change also: they see it in new lights and with different eyes; events may have given unexpected illumination to some of its provisions, and what they read one way before they read a very different way now. Then the logic of events may for all practical purposes