À BOOK TEACHING MORE THAN IT MEANS. Men who essay to write on controverted points should take heed, lost in their zeal for one side or the other thoy prove a great deal more than they intended. They may aim their arrows at one mark, and shoot so far as to hit a very different mark. This has been the case, we think, with the author of a book entitled “The Section. al Controversy,” just published by Scribner, of this city. It purports to be an inquiry into the causes of the present distracting state of the country, and to decide “which section of the Union is responsible for the operation of those causes." Subtle and adroit in the use of its materials, it is yet pervaded by an obvious bias throughout, and favors conclusious which will be anything but acceptable to genuine lovers of the Union. We do not assert that the book is purposely dishonest : for the statements of the writer appear to be made in good faith ; but we do say, that while it pretends to be historical, it furnishes a completely one-sided view of the great controversies which have divided our politics. We are given, for instance, at considerable length, the arguments in support of Calhoun's theory, that the federal conatitution is a mere compact between sovereign atstes, but we are not given the logical and convincing arguments by which Webster and others have opposed that theory. We are told, again, that the resistance of the North to the Fugitive Slave law was a wilful and fanatical encroachment upon the rights of the South, but we are not told of the profound constitutional and judicial principles on which that resistance was founded, apart from the bumanitary bearings of the question. We treated to Buchanan's and other statesmen's reasonings against the rightfulness of employing coercion against delinquent or seceded states, but we are not treated with the able and eloquent opinions by which other statesmen enforce the coercive rights and duties of the government. In short, the general impression left by the perusal of the work is, that the South is entirely justified in its main positions; that our Union is but a bargain or confederation; that slaves are regarded as property by the constitution; that slavery bas a national recognition and protection; that all agitation of the subject is an aggression; that the states are the judges in the last resort, of the constitutionality of laws; that they may secede if they feel themselves aggrieved; and that the government has no power or authority to coerce them into obedience. Tueso positions, of course, we do not now mean to controvert, and our object in noticing the book is to bring into distinct light its one principal and fundamental thought. It is tbis: that from the very origin of the government up to the present time, the people of the North and South have been divided by bitter sectional diversities of opinion, sentiment and action, which, bowever they may have been disguised or surrendered for a time, were sure to break out again on the first opportunity. These sectional diff en were manifested in the Continane ! are 69. way to the necessity of united action in the war of the revolution. They were not unknown even to the revolutionary army, and required all the moderation and energy of Washington to quell their influence. They were powerfully felt in the Constitutional Convention, and the constitution itself was but a compromise between them. There, as elsewhere, they gathered chiefly around the subject of slavery. Under the administration of Washington the leading measures, such as the duties on tonnage, the United States Bank, the assumption of state debts, were viewed entirely in a sectional light. John Adams's administration was opposed on the same ground. The anti-oommer. cial legislation of Jefferson and the purchase of Louisiana, produced an outbreak almost of the eastern states. Madison, with all his wisdom, could not allay the excitement. Under Monroe the Missouri question came near shivering the Union. Nullification began under the tariff system of John Quincy Adama, which Jackson succeeded in defeating only by mingled conciliation and menaces But on the beel of nullification came a fierce pro-slavery and anti-slavery discussion, which, on the various topics of abolition petitions, annexation of Texas, Wilmot proviso, Oregon territory, repeal of the Missouri Compromise, Fugitive Slave law, Personal Liberty bills, the orga. nization of Texas, the Dred Scott decision, and others, has waxed fiercer and fiercer, until the universal fire burst forth in secession and civil of war. war. Thus, for eighty years the question of slavery has been a bone of contention between the sections, giving color to all other questions, inflaming their animosities, disturbing legislation, periling the existence of the government, and leading finally to a tremendous eruption of fratricidal pasbions, and a malignant armed struggle. All the wisest and best men of the nation have tried again and again to allay the strife; compromizes were inserted in the organic law; compromises have been enacted by Congress; compromises Fere recommended by the Presidents ; compromises became the shibboleth of all the great parties; and yet, in spite of every effort, the original feud has gone on deeper, ing and widening until the parties to it are array face to face in the dread lines of battle, At tl hour the excitement is broader, the hatred i tenger, the determination of both sides firme tban they ever were before. A year and a half the bloodiest conflicts, which have involved no only the whole nation, but the civilized, world in their vortex, has rendered the contest only the more direct, more obetinate, more energetic and more impossible of a pacific solution. Now, let us ask, if this view of our past history, which the author of the work before us presents, be the true one, what are the inferonoes as to the course we should pursue in the future? Shall we patch up other compromises to be followed by oiber more sanguinary wars? Are other compromixes probable after the exacerbations, the resent ments and the ruins of the present wollision ? Is a Union adable on the basis of Vability to non , could be the enaces came & e, Fugi in the otual quarrelling, clashing and fighting? Wo known not stand, so long as it should stand, on the ed all rink of an immediate dissolution ? Would not ington ur whole national existence become feverisb, erfully recarious, feeble, and destined inevitably to end ne con {ther in the despotism of a strong military chief, = them. r in the spasmodic revolutionism of the Central round merican states ? We confese we do not see how Eration ay man of reflective mind, and familiar with the as the zitations of the past, as they are developed in the 'ork before us, can hope for any permanent re-y in a onciliation of the sections on any political grounds - was 'et devised or that can be devised. amer Look at the facts. A small but powerful class at Lase of he South has succeeded in getting its own interof the ests incorporated into the laws of separate states and recognised by the federal government. It has derived from this fact great social distinetion Union. und enormous political power. It owns the land, system $ rules legislation Can it be supposed, then, that eded in in oligarchy of this sort will consent to relinquish të privileges so long as a single slave remains ? On the other hand, the people of the Nortb, genuine ussion, eirs of the nineteenth century, and sharing the titions, onvictions and sentiments of the civilized world, Oregon cre more and more assured that slavery is a moral vrong, a political curse, an economical incubus, and ne orga n every other aspect a terrible evil. Can you :hange these convictions, can you eradicate those zentiments ? Until you can, the antagonism of nad civil North and South must continue. There is but one alternative in the cago: either slavery the North and South must separate--or the single be sac cause of all their past and present calamities must sıflaming be removed. But a peaceful separation is, in our periling (view of it, utterly impracticable. A thousand leading causes, geographical, ethnological, commercial and idal p33- moral, determine and devote this continent to poliAll the tical unity. . If the people of it have not been able to live in peace under the sacred and compro- intimate bonds of constitutional obligation, will r; com- they live in peace . (the of ongress ; ; division remaining) under the looser ties ne Prezi of mere treaty obligation? If, with a common language, common traditions, common institutions, spite of, and universal interchanges of social intercourse and deepetle of trade, we have fallen out, how shall we agree when other national remembrances and aims, other institutions, other laws, social exclusions and comhatred il mercial restrictions shall prevail? Europe, broken les firmey into distinct nationalities, has scarcely seen for da ballo eighteen centuries a single half century of peace. volved 10 Shall we fare better? No; disunion, if it were d, world in possible, would be ceaseless, endless war. t only the What, then, of the other branch of the alternaergetic and itive-the removal of the cause of our trouble, the extinction of slavery? Should it not be tried azt history, The slave states, by revolting against the authority s presente , of the national government, by organizing hostile s as to the armies, by fighting battles, and by inviting the aid Shall we of foreign monarchs to destroy the republic, have collowed by assumed a belligerent attitude, which places them on, and until the have 8&me causes oleth of re array At the have a right to confiscate their slaves, as property, as rapidly as our armies occupy their territory, or to accept of the services of their slaves as allies. Without doing violence to the constitution of the country, without infringing an iota or tittle of its provisions for a state of peace, we may exert the. transcendant prerogative of war. It would seem as if the Divine Providence, in very pity of our political disabilities, has cast upon us this military potency. We are asked and commanded to fulfil our native destiny, by making real that glorious ideal of human freedom with which we began. Our young republic, heretofore, like Milton's tawny lion, "pawing to get free bis hinder parts," may yet “break his bonds, and rampant shake his divided mane." Then disenthralled, homogeneous, united, instinct with a new life and energy and goodness, she would become, in fact, what she once was and still is in aspiration, the home of truly democratic institutions; the nurse of every just and generous policy, domestic and international; the asylum of the earth's oppressed; the hope and model of mankind, to which the heroes of the old world, in their stern struggles for larger light and liberty, would turn for solace, and statesmen, in their boldest schemes of human grandeur, look for guidance. In the presence of that superb experiment by which, in another part of the globe, we have seen ten millions of serfs peacefully transferred into ten millions of free peasants, it is worse than idle, it is almost shameful, to debate the feasibility of turning four millions of slaves into freedmen. Have we yet to learn that the surest guaranty of order is liberty under equal laws? But of this topic a word to-morrow. in the position of public enemies. They are amenaCiligion? Is tional law of belligerents. Under that code we , the resent ble to all the rules and penalties of the internas acr compro THE SECTIONAL CONTROVERSY ; Passages in the Political Hisiory of the Vaited States, including the Carees of the War between ibe 3. ctions. By Wikian Chauncey Fowler, LL D. New York: Scribner. 1862. 8vo. pp. xll + 269. Mr. Fowler is indifferent to the moral question of slavery, and ignores it. Nor does he care to consider what new rights and duties the war has created, He seeks to interpret the history of the country as if there had been no war; to thro v the legal opus of blame upon the North, and disilay the South shining with that legal righteousn ; which is to hide the substantial crimes that lurk beneath. If the argument that he has juggled together means any. ihirg, it is that the North has viola ed the rights of the South, and that the South was therefore justitied in deceding. It will require more ability and industry than that of this immoral doctor of laws to establish a proposition whose premiss is a lie, and whose conclusion justifies a crime. |