accordingly.
And if Congress shall break up the present Union by unconstitutionally
putting strife and enmity and armed hostility between different
sections of the country, instead of the domestic tranquility which
the Constitution was meant to insure, will not all the States be
absolved from their Federal obligations? Is any portion of the
people bound to contribute their money or their blood to carry on
a contest like that?

"The right of the General Government to preserve itself in its
whole constitutional vigor by repelling a direct and positive
aggression upon its property or its officers cannot be denied.
But this is a totally different thing from an offensive war to
punish the people for the political misdeeds of their State
Government, or to enforce an acknowledgment that the Government of
the United States is supreme. The States are colleagues of one
another, and if some of them shall conquer the rest, and hold them
as subjugated provinces, it would totally destroy the whole theory
upon which they are now connected.

"If this view of the subject be correct, as I think it is, then
the Union must utterly perish at the moment when Congress shall
arm one part of the people against another for any purpose beyond
that of merely protecting the General Government in the exercise
of its proper constitutional functions.

"I am, very respectfully, yours, etc.,

"J. S. BLACK."

ERRATUM.

In Chapter VIII., there is some inaccuracy in regard to the number
of killed in the John Brown raid at Harper's Ferry. According to
the official report of Colonel Robert E. Lee, U.S.A., who commanded
the military force that relieved Harper's Ferry, the insurgents
numbered in all nineteen men,--fourteen white, five colored. Of
the white men, ten were killed; two, John Brown and Aaron C. Stevens,
were badly wounded; Edwin Coppee, unhurt, was taken prisoner; John
E. Cooke escaped. Of the colored men, two were killed, two taken
prisoner, one unaccounted for.

THE APPENDICES.

The progress of the country, referred to so frequently in the text,
is strikingly illustrated and verified by the facts contained in the
several appendices which follow.

The appendices include a variety of subjects, and they have all
been selected with the view of showing the progress and development
of the Nation in the different fields of enterprise and human labor.

The tabular statements as to the population and wealth of the
country will be