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the election of President Lincoln was the signal for secession in the Southern States? How came it that this event was the spark which fired the train, and caused the mine to explode?

We conceive the answer to this question to be found in the fact that the President, whether his powers be great or small, is the chief magistrate; that he is the head of the state; that, moreover, he is virtually chosen directly by the votes of the entire population; and that, therefore, he appears to embody the national will, and to be the national exponent of the political principle upon which his election turns. Now it cannot be denied that the election of Mr. Lincoln turned upon the view of the slavery question entertained by the Republican party of the North. The cotton States of the South viewed his return as a national declaration against their view of this vital question. Their fears were excited, their animosity was roused; they regarded the election as an open declaration of war against their property;' and South Carolina, the former leader in the nullification struggle, the most impetuous and passionate, though not the most powerful and important, of the Southern States, took the lead in declaring for secession.

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Although this proceeding of the Southern States may not have been purely rational, we must admit that it was not unnatural. The election of Lincoln may not have been a sufficient provocation to a philosopher, or even to a prudent statesman; but we cannot be surprised that an average planter should take alarm at a national anti-slavery demonstration. The true lesson which this event seems to us to teach, is, not the folly of the multitude in the Southern States, but the danger of an election of the chief magistrate by the simultaneous votes of the entire population, and of his consequent identification with some disputed principle, or with some political party. In France, this mode of electing the chief magistrate has destroyed the liberties of the country, by facilitating the conversion of a President into an Emperor. The élu de cinq millions' seemed to hold his office by a stronger popular tenure than the Chamber itself, and could appeal to the principle of popular sovereignty in re-enacting the eighteenth of Brumaire. In America, the solemn declaration of national opinion involved in a presidential election has so worked upon the passions and imagination of the defeated party, that they have sought safety in secession. It may be true that a small number of persons, who have occupied high places, have for several years past been contriving means for a disruption of the Union. But without some event which gave a sudden and simultaneous impulse to the mind of the South, they might have continued

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to plot for years in secret, and might have remained leaders without a follower.

The method of indirect election by which the President of the United States is chosen, has likewise contributed to the progress of the late secessional movement. That which is called the Presidential election is in fact nothing more than the election of a college of electors. It was intended by the framers of the Constitution that these electors should exercise a real discretion. But in practice they have become the mere ministerial organs of their constituents; the election of the electors is equivalent to the election of the President; and the delivery of their votes after an interval of several months is a mere form. When the election of a new President involves a fundamental change of policy, and a transfer of power from one political party to another, it is clear that an interregnum of four months, during which the executive power remains in the hands of a defeated outgoing party, is a period full of danger to the Constitution. We are fully conscious of the difficulties of the position in which the Federal Government has been placed since the outbreak of the secession movement; but the chances of resisting its progress would have been far greater, if Mr. Lincoln had been installed in office in November last.

We have already observed, that although the outbreak of the secession movement has been sudden and unexpected, its causes are deep-seated, and that symptoms of disunion have for some time been apparent. That these symptoms have been patent even to foreigners making a temporary visit to the States, is sufficiently shown by the following passage in the letters of Mr. James Stirling from the Slave States, written at the Havanna, 1st January, 1857, more than four years ago. It will be observed, that he anticipates disruption at no distant period, and calmly speculates on its results.

'There is, I find, a party in the South conscientiously, and almost fanatically, in favour of disunion, and the whole South might be very easily brought to coincide in the disunion movement by an imprudent or aggressive course of policy on the part of the North. There is a party called the "Southern Party," which is distinctly in favour of a separation. This party is striving at present to prepare for the separation which they expect and desire, by making the South what they call "independent" of the North. It consists mainly of the aristocratic democracy of the South. Its head-quarters are, of course, to be found in South Carolina, that hot-bed of agitation and nullification. But this party would, I believe, carry along with it, even in its most insane policy, a great proportion of the low white population, all that part, namely, which I have already described as participating in the passions and prejudices of the planters, though not in their

interests. Hatred of abolitionism (which with them is identical with "the North") on the one hand, and jealousy of the nigger on the other, will ever make this miserable mob a ready tool in the hands of a fanatical party. Opposed to this extreme party is all the Conservative intelligence of the South. That this element is powerful, we know by the strong Fillmore minority of the late election. But whether it may be powerful enough to withstand and overrule the fanatical favourers of disunion, is what I cannot undertake to say; and it appears to me that amid so many elements of uncertainty in the future, both from the excited state of men's minds in the States themselves, and the complication of surrounding circumstances, no wise man would venture to foretell the probable issue of American affairs during the next four years. Among the Americans themselves, the majority look on a separation as impossible; on the other hand, many consider it quite possible; and a few look on it as certain, at all events, within a generation. Men are probably swayed unconsciously by their hopes and fears in coming to a conclusion. Those who regard disunion as synonymous with civil war, comfort themselves with the idea of its impossibility; they who take a less gloomy view of its effects, are probably less incredulous as to its advent.

'Most Americans, I think, are of opinion that a peaceable separation is an impossibility, and that if it comes to a disunion, it must come to a civil war. Some say that there would be so many irritating questions in regard to national property, the army, navy, archives, &c., that they could not be amicably adjusted. Others again think that the Northern Slave States, which in case of separation would be Border States, would be so exposed to harassing evils in the way of fugitive slaves, &c., that they would not peaceably submit to a separation. For my part, I think these fears exaggerated, as also the apprehensions of evils to result from a separation of the empire. In the first place there is quite sufficient territory, and to spare, to form two great empires. The Free States have an area of 612,597 square miles; the Slave States of 851,508; while France and Great Britain together only make up 329,057, or not much more than half of the Free States. Besides this, there are 1,472,061 square miles of territory to divide, so that each of the new empires would possess nearly a million and a half of square miles of land. Nothing but the most insatiable desire for land would complain of such an allowance of the earth's surface.' (P. 94.)

When the Constitution of the United States was framed, the abolition of negro slavery in countries where the field labour of whites is impossible, had not become a practical question. The most advanced philanthropists of England at that time limited their endeavours to the abolition of the African slave-trade. In 1787, and for many years afterwards, an abolitionist meant an enemy not to slavery, but to the slave-trade. The authors of the American Constitution were, however, unfriendly to slavery; they considered it a blot in a system which was pre

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eminently founded upon freedom; they desired its gradual extinction; and they carefully excluded the word from the written Constitution. But though the word was avoided, two provisions of the Constitution recognised the existence of the thing; one assigning the proportion of representatives to population; the other conferring a right of recapturing fugitive slaves in a State in which slavery is not recognised by law. The reluctance of the framers of the Constitution to deal openly with the subject of slavery is apparent in the circuitous language of these two provisions. In the first, slaves are described by the circumlocution of persons other than free persons.' In the other a fugitive slave is designated as a person 'held to service or labour in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another.' The Constitution likewise contained a clause prohibiting the imposition of restrictions upon the importation of slaves prior to 1808; from which year the slavetrade was subsequently prohibited by the legislation of the Federal Government. Here again the foreign slave-trade was denoted by the periphrasis, of the importation of such persons, as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit.' The division of opinions and interests, on the embarrassing question of slavery, between the Northern and Southern States, first assumed a tangible legislative form in the controversy engendered by the admission of Missouri as a new State. Upon the admission of this State, an act of Congress was passed, in 1820, containing an enactment that, in all that territory ceded by France to the United States, under the ' name of Louisiana, which lies north of 36° 30′ north latitude, not included within the limits of the State contemplated by this act [viz., Missouri], slavery and involuntary servitude, otherwise than in the punishment of crime whereof the parties shall have been duly convicted, shall be, and hereby is, prohibited for ever.' This was the effect of the celebrated compact known as the Missouri Compromise.' It drew the line of 36° 30' north latitude between exclusive freedom and permitted slavery; but it excepted the State of Missouri, the whole of which lies north of this line, and it applied only to the territory purchased by the United States from Bonaparte.

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At the very commencement of the question as to the admission of the Missouri Territory, in 1820, Mr. Jefferson wrote a letter to his friend John Holmes, which expressed with startling and prophetic vehemence the impression produced on his mind by that proposal.

'I had for a long time,' said he, 'ceased to read newspapers or to pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands,

and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant. But this momentous question, like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for a moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will make it deeper and deeper.' (Jefferson's Correspondence, vol. iv. p. 332.)

It is impossible to express with greater truth and force the bearing of the whole question. Although the Missouri line did not apply to the existing States, yet the recent secession has unquestionably turned upon the coincidence of a geographical line with a political principle. At the close of the same letter, Jefferson added that if the authors of secession would but 'dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away, against an abstract principle more likely to be effected by union than by secession, they would pause before they per'petrated this act of suicide on themselves, and of treason against the hopes of the world.'

The conflict of interests between the South and the North has turned to a great extent upon the questions involved in the Missouri Compromise. If the United States were not an expansive and colonising community; if they had no territories; and were not, from time to time, aggregating new colonies, in the shape of new States, to the old federation, the existing differences between the North and South would not have arisen: or, at all events, would not have assumed a character of such determined animosity. The only principle on which permanent concord between the North and South can subsist, is that of complete neutrality and indifference on the subject of slavery. This was the principle adopted by the framers of the Constitution. They tried to shut their eyes to the existence of slavery, and to keep it out of sight, by avoiding the use of the unpleasant word; by legislating respecting it, in the Federal Pact, as little as possible; and by leaving it under the exclusive control of the State legislatures. The same principle of noninterference has been constantly followed by all Federalists and Unionists who regard the maintenance of the Union as paramount to all other considerations. If slavery could have been left within the exclusive dominion of State Sovereignty, this mode of treating the subject might have afforded a practical solution of the difficulty. But the territories belonged to the United States as a whole, and they became necessarily the subjects of federal legislation. As population spread to the west, as unoccupied lands became territories, and as territories

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