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enormity, seemed to bring a practical, visible crisis to the whole country nearer at hand. From such a contingency considerate men shrank with honest dread; and a sensible reaction took place, capable of being made to serve the best purposes, for the promotion and security of the common peace and welfare.

The character of this assault upon the military post of Harper's Ferry is to be judged of, however, not by the insignificance of the instruments, or by its inevitable failure to accomplish the end designed. It assumes importance, or otherwise, just in proportion to the countenance given to it by others than those immediately engaged in it; to the approbation subsequently bestowed by the public upon the actors, and to the numbers of those willing to become accessories after the fact to a deed of midnight murder, intended to be the inauguration of a servile insurrection, in the exercise of sufficient strength to give loose to all the atrocities and brutalities common to such a savage uprising. And nothing was here wanting to insure a more wide-spread scene of horror and desolation than the world, perhaps, had ever before witnessed, except a totally different relation between the masters and their servants in the South, than that falsely imagined by the conspirators, and by those in sympathy with them, either before or after the fact. Of course, the reverend clergy, the good men and good women, who met in the sanc tuaries of the Father of Mercies, to celebrate an attempt so full of the omens of miseries unutterable, and to mourn over its ill success, must have seen this transaction through a very different medium from that by which questions not subject to the beguilements of casuistry ordinarily present themselves to a truly Christian mind. They rejoiced, in fact, that a supposed moral object had been sought by the commission of a deliberate crime, and, under an unhappily perverted sense of the right, supposed that the end aimed at justified the means. But, according to the degree in which it was met by the favorable response of the North-though in itself but the skirmish of an outpost, in its immediate incidents—it never

theless betokened predetermined enmity in one part of the Union against another part; was an overt act of hostility towards the Government, in the peace of which only could the Union stand secure, and was the signal and forerunner of war.

Indeed, at this moment, the conservative masses of the country possessed an immense superiority of physical and moral force over their opponents; and could that have been guided by prudence and patriotism, it must have resulted in the entire and permanent overthrow of the now concentrated elements of radicalism and discord. At the election for President, in the ensuing year, the Republican candidate, Mr. Lincoln, fell short of a majority by nearly a million of votes; while his plurality, in the free States alone, was considerably less than two hundred thousand.1 It needed now, far more than upon the important occasion to which Mr. Benton referred in a note to the Debates in Congress, already cited in his volume, "the last words of the last great men of that wonderful time." There were many still upon the stage, inspired by as noble sentiments of patriotism as had ever animated the hearts of elder patriots; but the latter had left few or no successors to the powerful influence which they personally exerted, and which had been found hitherto able to compose the stormy passions by which the country had at times been agitated. But, although the multitude, under the whip applied by a very inferior order of men, was fast getting possession of the bit, to run the sort of helter-skelter race which usually occurs under such circumstances, it needed, after all, but a very little of that true spirit of conciliation, among persons of substantial influence, on both

1 Lincoln's vote was 1,857,611; the combined vote of Douglas, Breckinridge, and Bell amounted to 2,804,560. In the free States, the Republicans cast 1,731,182 votes; the opposition, 1,544,218. In the five of the fifteen slaves States, which cast a certain number of votes for Lincoln, namely: Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Virginia, the aggregate reached 26,430-principally cast in Missouri, namely, 17,028. In the same States, the sum of the votes for his opponents was 561,068.

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sides, which should have marked the conduct of fellow-citizens, in an enlightened and Christian age, to avert that ter rible impending catastrophe, which, it is not to be supposed, that the great majority, upon either side, could have really desired to bring upon the common country.

CHAPTER XIII.

Want of Fidelity to the Constitution placed the Country in Circumstances tending to Open Rupture." Historicus."-The Necessity of Strict Adherence to Constitutional Provisions in a Republic.-The Danger still before the Country.-The South, in a Constitutional Point of View.-Ex-Governor Andrew before a Committee of the Senate.The "People" did not bring about the War.-The Disunionists, in both Sections, to whom it was owing, few in Number.-Governor Banks willing "to let the Union slide." —A State Flag.—A Revolutionary Relic.—Mr. Quincy.-Red Republicans.-Mr. John P. Hale's Opinion of the Likelihood of Dissolution if Lincoln should not be elected.

In the facts, thus imperfectly set forth in these pages, are to be found the positive causes of the war. These worked themselves out to the fatal hour of that decisive breach in the Democratic party, which opened the way to the "dishonest victory" of the Republicans-dishonest, not because the election was not lawful and regular according to the forms of the Constitution; but that, in consequence of its accidental result by the divisions of the majority, it so thoroughly misrepresented the real state of sentiment in the country. In fine,-want of fidelity to the Constitution--a long and devious aberration from the simplest fundamental principles of the Union--exhibited in such manifestations as have been described in this recapitulation, led directly to that unhappy state of mind, in both sections, which grew more and more embittered, until finally the die was cast.1 Were it not so,

1 In a recently published letter of the distinguished English writer, known as "Historicus" (October 18th, 1865), appears the following passage, in reference to a judicial opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States:

"These are the words of a judgment (pronounced, be it remembered, by the Northern majority of the Court): This greatest of civil wars was not gradually developed by popular commotion, tumultuous assemblies, or local

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those earnest and solemn remonstrances of Webster (the "Defender of the Constitution"), of Clay, of Crittenden-of hosts of far-seeing and patriotic citizens, dead or yet among the living-remonstrances. so long and faithfully sounded in the ears of a too incredulous people-might now seem as idle as the faltering accents of the most visionary alarmists.

But this view of the case is the more important to be taken into the most solicitous consideration, by the people of the United States, because any secure possession of their civil rights is absolutely dependent upon unvarying adhesion to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution. For that great instrument, defining and restraining the powers of those persons in the representative, executive, and judicial departments of the Government, to whom the people from time to time commit the administration of the laws, is the sole charter of their political liberties, and their only barrier against

unorganized insurrection. If it had been, it might have been proper to wait and see whether it was about to ripen into war. But in this case, there was neither necessity nor justification for waiting.' For, continues the same judgment, 'however long may have been its previous conception, it nevertheless sprang from the parent brain of Minerva in the full panoply of war.'"

Saying nothing of this judicial reversal of a classical legend, or of the philosophy which could suppose it possible for a great rebellion to spring up at the stamp of a foot, in a country where a very great many must have been previously consulted on the subject-considering the fierce and protracted struggle of 1850 and its result; the tumults for such a series of years, and the battles, in Kansas; the slave-rescues by the violence of mobs; the assaults upon court-houses, not always without incurring the dreadful guilt of murder; the invasion of Virginia, and its effects upon both sections; the multitudes of excited popular assemblies in city and town; and innumerable other incidents occurring in various parts of the country, for the ten years before the outbreak-showing a decidedly morbid condition of the public mind—it may be respectfully remarked, that the "Northern majority of the Court" cannot have observed the course of events so carefully as they, doubtless, study the points of law submitted to them. The truth is, the country was full of warnings, and everybody expected war, from the signs of the times, but the Republican leaders. They were naturally reluctant to admit that any thing for which they were responsible could be the occasion of unpleasant consequences.