not for a
political theory, but for an ecclesiastical one, Henry Ward Beecher
would have backed him to a finish. If there is any one group of people
on earth, therefore, who ought not only to understand but to appreciate
John C. Calhoun's argument, they are the Independents. Now for twenty
years John C. Calhoun went up and down the South, analyzing his
argument, explaining and enforcing it. At the very time Northern boys
were reading in their readers Webster's speech for the Union, Southern
boys were reciting Calhoun's speech for the independence of the States.

Not in consequence of the Calhoun doctrine but in harmony with it,
having always held that the Union was subordinate to the sovereignty of
the States, Jefferson Davis, United States senator from Mississippi,
became the chief organizer of secession after Lincoln's election. A West
Point graduate, a brilliant officer in Indian fights and the Mexican
War, a governor of Mississippi, United States senator, a singularly
efficient Secretary of War under President Pierce, and again an
influential senator, a man of charming personality with many friends,
Mr. Davis was so prominent in the secession movement that he was the
free choice of the Southern people for president of their Confederacy.
And, despite Mr. Stephens' opinion, he probably did as well in that
difficult place as another could have done. To the end of his life he
held to the doctrine of State sovereignty.

But one question persistently forces itself into the foreground. Why was
it that the people of the North did not "let the erring sisters go," to
use Horace Greeley's expression? Just across the Northern line dwells
another nation--Canada. Why should there not have been a second nation
to the south of Mason and Dixon's line, with Mobile or New Orleans for a
capital--a great slave empire, that would have included Texas, Mexico
and Central America? The answer is very simple. The Constitution stood
in the way. Men saw clearly that if this republic, conceived in liberty
and dedicated to the proposition that all men were created equal, could
be destroyed by the minority, that would not respect the rights of the
majority, there was no hope for civilization save in the revival of
despotism, with a monarch ruling the people by military force. The North
by a majority of States and votes had chosen Lincoln, with his statement
that the Union could not permanently endure, half slave and half free.
The minority then