even in the free States to take part with the slave-owners, that the name of Abolitionist was used as a term of reproach and scorn; and to point out a man as worthy of wearing it, was in some places the same thing as to recommend him to the attentions of the mob. Yet even while this was a name of opprobrium, the hostility to slavery was gathering strength under a new form. The friends of slavery demanded that the authority of the master over his bondman should be recognized in all the territory belonging to the Union not yet formed into States, in short, that the jurisdiction of the Republic, wherever established, should carry with it the law of slavery. A party was immediately formed to resist the application of this doctrine, and after a long and vehement contest elected its candidate President of the United States. Meantime the rapid settlement of our Pacific coast by a purely free population, in consequence of the opening of the gold mines, showed the friends of slavery that they were to be hereafter in a minority, the power of which would diminish with every successive year. They instantly took the resolution to revolt against the Union, declared it thenceforth dissolved, and rushed into a war, in which their defeat carried with it the fall of slavery. It fell, dragging down with it thousands of private fortunes, and leaving some of the fairest portions of the region whence it issued its decrees ravaged and desolate, and others, for a time, given over to a confusion little short of anarchy.

Writers who record the fortunes of nations have most generally and wisely stopped at a modest distance from the time in which they wrote, for this reason among others, that the narrative could not be given with the necessary degree of impartiality, on account of controversies not yet ended, and prejudices which have not had time to subside. But in the case of American slavery the difficulty of speaking impartially both of the events which form its history, and of the characters of its champions and adversaries, is far less now than it ever was before. Slavery has become a thing of the past; the dispute as to its rights under our Constitution is closed forever. The class of active and vigilant politicians

who, a few years since, were ever on the watch for some opportunity of promoting its interests by legislation, is now as if it had never been; slavery is no longer either denounced or defended from the pulpits; the division of political journals into friends and enemies of slavery exists no longer, and when a candidate for office is presented for the suffrages of his fellow citizens, it is no longer asked, "What does he think of the slavery question?" So far indeed, does this fierce contest seem already removed into the domain of the past, and separated from the questions and interests of the present moment, that when a person is pointed out as having been a distinguished Abolitionist he is looked at with somewhat of the same historical interest as if it had been said, "There goes one who fought so bravely at Lundy's Lane; " or, "There is one who commanded a company of riflemen at the battle of New Orleans." The champions of slavery on one side — able men and skilled in the expedients of party warfare, and in many instances uncorrupt and pure in personal character, — and the champions of the slave on the other, fearless and ready for the martyrdom which they sometimes suffered, their faculties exalted by a sense of danger, can now, as they and their acts pass in review before the historian, be judged with a degree of calmness belonging to a new era of our political existence.

But the great conclusion is still to be drawn that the existence of slavery in our Republic was at utter variance with the free institutions which we made our boast; and that it could not be preserved in the vast growth which it had attained without altering in a great degree their nature, and communicating to them its own despotic character. Where half the population is in bondage to the other half there is a constant danger that the subject race will rise against their masters, who naturally look to repression and terror as their means of defence. The later history of slavery in our country is full of examples to show this severe laws against sedition in the slave States, an enforced silence on the subject of human liberty, an expurgated popular literature, and visitors to the slave States chased back by mobs across the fron

tier which they had imprudently crossed. It is remarkable that, not very long before the civil war, certain of the southern journals began to maintain in elaborate leading articles that the time had arrived for considering whether the entire laboring class of whatever color, should not be made the serfs of the land-owners and others of the more opulent members of society.

A history like this would have been incomplete and fragmentary had it failed to record the final fate as well as the rise and growth of an institution wielding so vast an influence both in society and politics, with champions so able and resolute, organized with such skill, occupying so wide and fertile a domain and rooted there with such firmness as to be regarded by the friends of human liberty with a feeling scarcely short of despair. To have broken off the narrative before reaching the catastrophe, would have been like rising from the spectacle of a drama at the end of the fourth act. Few episodes in the world's history have been so complete in themselves as this of American slavery. Few have brought into activity such mighty agencies, or occupied so vast a theatre, or been closed, although amid fearful carnage, yet in a manner so satisfactory to the sense of natural justice.

Here is the place to speak of another important conclusion to be drawn from the result of our late civil war. It has proved the strength of our political system. When the slave States first revolted it is wonderful with what unanimity the people of the Old World, even those who wished well to the Northern States, adopted the conclusion, that the Union could endure no longer, and that the bond once broken could never be reunited. Those powers which had regarded the United States as a somewhat uncomfortable neighbor, rapidly becoming too strong to be reasonable in its dealings with the monarchies of Europe, fully believed that thereafter there would exist, on the North American continent, two rival commonwealths of the same origin, yet so diverse from each other in their institutions, as to be involved in frequent disagreements, and thus to prove effectual checks upon each other, relieving the European powers from the danger of aggression in this

quarter. It was sometimes said by Englishmen who thought that they were speaking in the interest of humanity: "All the interest we feel in your quarrel is this, that you should go to pieces as quickly and with as little bloodshed as possible." The steps taken by Great Britain and France were in accord with the expectation of which I have spoken; Britain instantly declaring the slave States a belligerent power- a virtual acknowledgment of their independence and France posting a dependent Prince in Mexico with the view of intervening in that quarter as soon as it might appear politic to do so. Till the close of our civil war the armed cohorts of France hung like a thunder-cloud over our southwestern border, but the hour never came when the signal might be given for the grim mass to move northward.

The period of time at which the nation inhabiting the domain of our Republic came into being is so recent, that we may trace its growth with as much distinctness as if we were the contemporaries of its birth. The records of its early existence have been preserved as those of no other nation have been, which has risen to any importance in the annals of the world. To the guidance of these the historian may trust himself securely, with no danger of losing his way among the uncertain shadows of tradition. It is with a feeling of wonder that he sees colonies, planted in different parts of the North American continent so remote from each other, under such different circumstances, and so entirely without concert on the part of the adventurers who led them thither, united at last in a political fabric of such strength and solidity. The columns of the great edifice were separately laid in the wilderness amid savage tribes, by men who apparently had no thought of their future relation to each other; but as they rose from the earth it seemed as if a guiding intelligence had planned them in such a manner that in due time they might be adjusted to each other in a single structure. Those who at the outbreak of our civil war administered the governments of Europe, had, it is certain, little confidence in the stability and duration of a political fabric so framed. It was loosely and fortuitously put together, they thought, of ele

ments discordant in themselves, whose imperfect cohesion a shock like that of the southern revolt would destroy forever.

It survived that shock, however, and, in part at least, for the very reason of its peculiar structure. It survived it because every man in the free States felt that he was a part of the government; because in our system of decentralized power a part of it was lodged in his person. He felt that he was challenged when the Federal Government was defied, and that he was robbed when the rebels took possession of the forts of the Federal Government and its munitions of war. The quarrel became his personal concern, and the entire people of the North rose as one man to breast and beat back this bold attack upon a system of polity, which every man of them was moved to defend by the feeling which would move him to defend his fireside. Perhaps out of this fortuitous planting of our continent in scattered and independent settlements, has arisen the strongest form of government, so far as respects cohesion and self-maintenance, that the world has seen. Certainly the experience of the last few years, beginning with the civil war, gives plausibility to this idea.

All the consequences of that war have not been equally fortunate with this. It may be admitted that, in some instances, the influence of a military life on the young men who thronged to our camps was salutary, in bringing out the better qualities of their character and moulding it to a more manly pattern, by overcoming the love of ease and accustoming the soldier to endure suffering and brave danger for the common cause. Yet it is certain that in other men it encouraged brutal instincts which had been held in check by the restraints of a peaceful order of things; that it made them careless of inflicting pain, and indifferent to the taking of life. Accordingly, after the close of the war, crimes of violence became fearfully numerous, men more often carried about deadly weapons, quarrels more often led to homicide, robberies accompanied by assassination were much more frequent, and acts of housebreaking were perpetrated with greater audacity. It would seem invidious to say that these crimes were most frequent in the region which had been the