those famous statesmen referred to ever resounded in the
halls of the Capitol, long before the "Liberator" opened its batteries,
the controversy now working itself out by trial of battle was foreseen
and predicted. Washington warned his countrymen of the danger of
sectional divisions, well knowing the line of cleavage that ran through
the seemingly solid fabric. Jefferson foreshadowed the judgment to fall
upon the land for its sins against a just God. Andrew Jackson announced
a quarter of a century beforehand that the next pretext of revolution
would be slavery. De Tocqueville recognized with that penetrating
insight which analyzed our institutions and conditions so keenly, that
the Union was to be endangered by slavery, not through its interests,
but through the change of character it was bringing about in the people
of the two sections, the same fatal change which George Mason, more than
half a century before, had declared to be the most pernicious effect of
the system, adding the solemn warning, now fearfully justifying itself
in the sight of his descendants, that "by an inevitable chain of causes
and effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities."
The Virginian romancer pictured the far-off scenes of the conflict which
he saw approaching as the prophets of Israel painted the coming woes of
Jerusalem, and the strong iconoclast of Boston announced the very year
when the curtain should rise on the yet unopened drama.

The wise men of the past, and the shrewd men of our own time, who warned
us of the calamities in store for our nation, never doubted what was
the cause which was to produce first alienation and finally rupture. The
descendants of the men "daily exercised in tyranny," the "petty tyrants"
as their own leading statesmen called them long ago, came at length
to love the institution which their fathers had condemned while they
tolerated. It is the fearful realization of that vision of the poet
where the lost angels snuff up with eager nostrils the sulphurous
emanations of the bottomless abyss,--so have their natures become
changed by long breathing the atmosphere of the realm of darkness.

At last, in the fulness of time, the fruits of sin ripened in a sudden
harvest of crime. Violence stalked into the senate-chamber, theft and
perjury wound their way into the cabinet, and, finally, openly organized
conspiracy, with force and arms, made burglarious entrance into a chief
stronghold of the Un