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provincial states to point the way, but have trustfully moved on from step to step in the direction of an ideal excellence which was early in their minds, and has been steadily adhered to since.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE WAR IN DEFENSE OF THE UNION.

A GREAT war was now about to convulse the Union, of which slavery would be the occasion, but which would present issues far transcending in importance any which were involved in the further continuance of that institution, great as were the evils which necessarily sprung from it. The states of the Union, which at the time of the separation from the mother country were thirteen in number, had added other commonwealths one by one until the whole number had become thirtythree, united under a constitution which gave to the weakest for all purposes of protection the strength and resources of all, and which, by providing for the peaceful consideration and adjustment by regular tribunals of all controversies, which might otherwise give occasion for appeals to force, gave to the whole family of states the best security for amicable and profitable relations, and to civilization the best protection that it is possible for statesmanship to devise. The same constitution, while it insured peace to the states, diminished immensely the danger of hostilities

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with foreign nations, not only because it made the states thus united sufficiently powerful to command respect, but also because it left international relations exclusively to the federal government, and put it out of the power of any single state, or even of any number of states, to disturb the peace of the world without the general consent given through the federal Congress. Under the influence of the passions excited by the controversy over slavery it was now proposed to break up the Union into sections. That great evils were likely to flow from this was certain; only the number and extent were in doubt. It would be a distinctively retrogressive step, taken in a century when civilization was progressing more rapidly than ever before; it must abolish, as between the states, in different sections, the methods provided for the peaceful determination of controversies; if it could be accomplished peacefully, which was more than doubtful, it would still multiply immensely the dangers to peace among the states, and would make the very proximity of states friendly in union a continual menace and danger. And the claim of a right to disrupt the Union was planted upon a principle of disintegration whose very acceptance would not only be justification in advance for further separations, but would be a constant and tempting invitation to discontented parties to reject the adjustment of controversies by regular tribunals, and substitute the arbitra

ment of the sword. The proposed disruption of the Union must therefore, irrespective of its effect upon the institution of slavery, be a distinct loss to civilization, in that it would destroy or at least diminish the securities which statesmanship had contrived for the peace of the world, and especially for the peace and prosperity of the American world. It would also, in its demonstration that the written constitution of the leading federal government of the world was inadequate to the strain and crucial test of a heated domestic controversy, tend to weaken very greatly the popular tendency towards free institutions, and the harmonious coöperation of free states which was characteristic of the age.

But slavery was an element of discord in the Union which it was daily becoming more difficult to deal with peacefully. It had had its origin at a time when it was not condemned as it now was by the enlightened conscience of the civilized world. There were slaves in Virginia when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth; and every American colony became slaveholding, and continued to be so when, by their declaration of Independence, the united colonies declared liberty to be an inalienable right. When independence was acknowledged by Great Britain, only one state had as yet become non-slaveholding. So accustomed were the people to the institution, that its rightfulness was seldom questioned, and only now and

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then did any one venture to remark upon the inconsistency of a people fighting for their own liberties while holding others in bondage. The first damaging blow to slavery may almost be said to have been inadvertent: it was when the people of Massachusetts, without chattel slavery in mind, declared by the constitution of 1780 that "all men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and inalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their rights and liberties." This, as the courts decided, of its own force put an end to slavery within the state. The second and far more important blow was given when Congress incorporated in the ordinance of 1787 the antislavery proviso. This was a great and notable event; and was prophetic of others, for it was a precedent for putting the government distinctly on the side of freedom. And then in 1820 came the Missouri Compromise legislation, by which slavery was prohibited in all the territory then belonging to the Union lying to the north of latitude thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes.

It seemed at the time that the Missouri Compromise insured to the non-slaveholding states an eventual preponderance of power in the Union; but this was put in peril by the large acquisitions of territory from Mexico at the conclusion of war with that republic. In the justice of the war with Mexico there had not been entire unaminity of