total loss of freedom. Many have prophesied that this would be the end of the American Republic.
But a confederacy possesses one resource against such a catastrophe which is denied to a single State. Centralisation finds a natural barrier in the several State governments. "This balance," says Hamilton, "between the national and State governments is of the utmost importance; it forms a double security to the people. If one encroaches on their rights they will find a powerful protection in the other." That is indeed the peculiar merit of American institutions; it alters but does not settle the question. It gives to liberty in its struggle against centralisation a valuable auxiliary in the feudal system, but it does not decide the issue. That aggressive, absolute spirit which is the bane of pure Democracies prevailed much sooner and more completely in some States than in others, and the States which it animated strove to give it the supreme direction of the central government of the Union. They did not choose that other portions of the nation should be exempt from a kind of power to which they themselves submitted. But as soon as the different States made themselves the champions of opposite principles of government, the Union was in jeopardy.
Now there was one broad line of demarcation between the States, which divided them both in political principles and financial interests, and coincided moreover with the difference of climate and of modes of cultivation, as well as with certain early diversities of race. I mean, of course, that which was the immediate cause of the late revolution, that which, you will say, I have kept out of sight too long, the division between the slave States and the North.
If my present theme were the institution of slavery in general, I should endeavour to show that it has been a mighty instrument not for evil only, but for good in the providential order of the world. Almighty God, in His mysterious ways, has poured down blessings even through servitude itself, by awakening the spirit of sacrifice on
