Virginia followed the action of Kentucky. In December, 1798, her legislature passed a series of resolutions responsive to those of Kentucky. They were drafted by Mr. Madison. They referred to the spirit of the Federal Government "to enlarge its powers by forced constructions of the constitutional charter," and "so to consolidate the States by degrees into one sovereignty." They peremptorily declared that they viewed "the powers of the Federal Government, as resulting from the compact, to which the States are parties, as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that compact, as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the States, who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights, and liberties appertaining to them."

The resolutions of Virginia and Kentucky were communicated to the other States for council and co-operation. They drew upon them a unanimous burst of Federalist denunciation from all of the New England States. The replies of these States, and that of New York, reveal the extent of the early establishment of the consolidation school in the North, and discover those principles from which have flowed the more modern political principles of the Yankee.

Each of the New England States, confounding judicial cases with political questions, declared that the State legislatures had no power to supervise the acts of the General Government (which, it is scarcely necessary to say, parenthetically, was to nullify the political influence of the States); that the construction of such laws as the Alien and Sedition acts was exclusively vested in the judicial courts of the United States. Yet each of these States went out of the way to affirm, speculatively, the constitutionality and expediency of these acts. Massachusetts declared, that in no circumstances had the State legislatures" the right to denounce the administration of that government to which the people themselves, by a solemn compact, had exclusively committed their national concerns.' The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantation declared,

that the resolutions of Virginia were "very unwarrantable," and "hazarded an interruption of the peace of the States by civil discord." Connecticut "explicitly disavowed" the principles contained in these resolutions. New Hampshire thought the State legislatures were not the proper tribunals to pass upon the laws of the General Government. Vermont "highly disapproved" of the Virginia resolutions, and thought them "unconstitutional in their nature, and dangerous in their tendency." New York, then united to New England by the tie of Federalism, and long kept in that bad alliance by the influence of Hamilton, exceeded even the intolerance of her Puritan associates. Her legislature declared that they observed with anxiety and regret "the inflammatory and pernicious sentiments, and doctrines which are contained in the resolutions of Virginia and Kentucky."

On the issues involved in the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, Mr. Jefferson achieved a decisive triumph, and by his election to the presidency in 1800 put the Federalist party almost out of existence. After that event, it may be said to have degenerated into a mere local faction. Mr. Jefferson launched the country into a career of Democratic simplicity, and real substantial prosperity, that ran through many years. He abolished all the stately ceremonials which had grown up in Washington's administration. He discontinued the levees at the Executive Mansion; he dispensed with the pageant of opening Congress; he threw the doors of that assembly open, for the first time, to newspaper reporters, and broke down, as far as possible, every barrier of ceremony and exclusiveness between the Government and the people. The simplicity of his inauguration into office made people stare. An English spectator thus describes his appearance on the occasion: "His dress was of plain cloth, and he rode on horseback to the Capitol, without a single guard, or even servant, in his train; dismounted without assistance, and hitched the bridle of his horse to the palisades."

But Mr. Jefferson marked the administration of his high office with changes much more important than outward tokens of Democratic simplicity. He instituted a rule of rigid economy in every department of the Government. By economy alone, he reduced the public debt twelve millions of dollars.

By the purchase of Louisiana and treaties with the Indians, he doubled the area of the United States. The second census of the United States presented an increase of exports from nineteen to ninety-four millions of dollars. The country was on the high and plain road to prosperity.

IV.

The slavery question.-A libel on political nomenclature.-A brief moral defence of negro servitude in the South.-The history of its establishment.Accommodation of the slavery question in the Constitution.-Political history of the question.-The Hartford Convention.-Two blows aimed at the South.-Development of the slavery controversy.-Mr. Jefferson's opinion as to slavery in the territories.-The Missouri restriction.-The initial point of the war of sections.Mr. Jefferson's alarm.-The trace of disunion.-Real causes of conflict between the North and the South.-The slavery question subordinate and yet conspicuous. Why so?-How it was bound up in the conflict between State-rights and consolidation.-Northern civilization.-An insolent democracy.-Yankee "gentlemen."-Plainness of the South.-A noble type of civilization.-Effect of slavery on the political and social character of the South.-Yankee vulgarity.-Why the South was the nursery of American statesmen.

THE peaceful and fortunate career on which Mr. Jefferson's administration launched the country was to meet with a singular interruption. That interruption was the sectional agitation which finally broke the bonds of the Union and plunged North and South into one of the fiercest wars of modern times. The occasion of that conflict was what the Yankees called-by one of their convenient libels in political nomenclature-slavery; but what was in fact nothing more than a system of negro servitude in the South; well guarded by laws, which protected the negro laborer in the rights of humanity; moderated by Christian sentiments which provided for his welfare; and, altogether, one of the mildest and most beneficent systems of servitude in the world.

It is not our purpose here to enter upon a moral defence of slavery in the South (using, as we would remind the reader, that opprobrious term, wherever it occurs in these pages, under a constant protest, and simply because it has become the familiar word in the party controversies of America to describe the peculiar institution of labor in the South). Our object in these pages is simply with the political complications of slavery. But as a problem in morals there are but two principles which decide it; and these we may briefly turn our

pen to announce, candidly believing them to be the summary of the entire ethics of negro servitude in the South:

1. The white being the superior race, and the black the inferior, subordination, with or without law, must be the status of the African in the mixed society of whites and blacks.

2. It thus becomes the interest of both races, especially of the inferior race, that this status should be fixed and protected by law; and it was simply the declaration and definition of this principle that went by the name of negro slavery in the South.

Slavery (without that moderation of legislative checks and Christian sentiments which were the constant employment of the South) had been planted in America by the direct and persistent action of the British government. It was the common law of the thirteen colonies before their separation from England. The mother country established negro slavery in the colonies. It maintained and protected the institution. It originated and carried on the slave trade. It forbade the colonies permission either to emancipate or export their slaves. It prohibited them from inaugurating any legislation in diminution or discouragement of the institution. Even after the Continental Congress had been assembled, and the battle of Lexington had been fought, the earl of Dartmouth, British Secretary of State, in answer to a remonstrance from the agent of the colonies on the subject of the slave trade, replied: "We cannot allow the colonies to check or discourage in any degree a traffic so beneficial to the nation."

In the constitution of the United States, the slavery question had been singularly accommodated. Two clauses covered it. The first guaranteed to the South its property-it provided for the return of slaves recognized as the property of their Southern masters. Another clause, in the interest of the North, prevented a disturbance of the representative system by an importation of slaves, and provided that the South should not increase her negro population (tive of which in the basis of representation were made equal to three white men) by importation after the lapse of twenty years.

The political history of the slavery question in the early periods of the American Union is scarcely more than an enumeration of dates or of measures which were taken as