his friend in correspondence on the great questions of their
politics, and trying to draw him out, the _latter_, then a minister of
state, cautiously and warily declining to expose his views--he but
carried out the impression made in his rising and his announcement. It
was the only properly stump speech--I use the phrase in the high sense
in which it might be used of O'Connell or Clay--I ever heard in Germany.

Such is the man who has undertaken to write our country's history for
the Germans. Of his _work_ I have said nothing, for I have not seen it;
I write this impromptu on seeing the newspaper announcement of the first
volume. He will doubtless do much to set us right in the eyes of his own
people, where, however, there is less need of this than in _another_
land, whose people are more nearly related to us, where such service,
however, is less likely to be done.

THE GREAT AMERICAN CRISIS.

_PART THREE._

In the last preceding article on this subject in THE CONTINENTAL, we
concluded by considering the consequences of an early victory of the
North over the entire South, _followed by the restoration of the old
Union upon precisely the old basis_. We showed that, in such an event,
the war would have been barren of results even to the extent of removing
its own cause, or preventing its almost immediate and more desperate
renewal; that the question at issue is a question of paramount governing
power between two adverse theories of social existence; between two
distinct and conflicting civilizations; between two antagonistic and
irreconcilable political and moral forces; and that it must be fought
out to the complete subordination of the less advanced or more barbarous
and backward-tending of those forces--unless the wheels of progress on
this continent are to be reversed, and the watchword of despotism be
substituted for that of freedom: not only that it must be fought out on
the battle field, but that the fruits of the victory must not be blindly
or foolishly surrendered after the obvious and external victory is won.

We may say here, however, for the purpose of reserving the still more
radical consideration of the nature of this conflict for some future
day, that, adverse as these theories of social existence are--distinct
and conflicting as are these two civilizations--antagonistic and
irreconcilable as these contending political and moral forces now seem,
and for present practical purposes must be taken to