equality of all men in civil rights; and he denied the justice of the doctrine that the minority possesses nothing which is exempt from the control of the majority, because he knew that it was incompatible with the domestic institution which was as sacred to him as the rights of property. Therefore the very defect of their social system preserved them from those political errors which were transforming the original characters of the Northern Republics. The decomposition of Democracy was arrested in the South by the indirect influence of slavery.
Thus it came to pass that the South, to protect themselves, sought to restrain the central power, while the North wished to make it superior to all restraint. To one party it was a sword, to the other a shield. And so it happened that the long reign of Southern politics at Washington, down to the year 1860, provoked no rupture, because they desired self-government, and not empire; whereas the victory of the North in the election of Mr. Lincoln gave at once the signal for dissolving the Union. The Constitution failed to provide against the consequences which were to be expected whenever considerable diversities of character, of material interests, and of political spirit should estrange the several States. For this reason certain States accepted it with reluctance, and joined the Union with conditions which betrayed the apprehension that perhaps the bargain might turn out ill. Virginia, in the act of ratification, declared "that Powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression." New York and Rhode Island said the same. From time to time these fears revived, and single States meditated revoking the Act of Union. At length certain measures for the protection of manufactures in the East aroused a united opposition in the agricultural States, who were to pay for the benefit of the others. That was the first threatening of the storm that did not burst for thirty years.
Two great men stood forth as the champions of two
