is colleagues
both truly and impressively described the momentous struggle that at this
time broke upon the family of civilised nations in both hemispheres. "It
may be fairly asserted," says the particularly competent writer of it,
"that the war in America is the greatest event that has occurred in the
political world since the definitive fall of Napoleon in 1815. The
expulsion of the elder branch of the Bourbons in 1830; the expulsion of
Louis Philippe in 1848; the re-establishment of a republic, and the
subsequent restoration of a Bonaparte to the imperial throne--were all
important events, both to France and to the rest of Europe; but (with the
exception of the recent annexation of Savoy and Nice) they have not
altered the boundaries of France; and Europe still, in spite of minor
changes, substantially retains the form impressed upon it by the treaty of
Vienna.(48) With respect to the internal consequences of these changes, a
French revolution has become a fight in the streets of Paris, in order to
determine who shall be the occupant of the Tuileries. The administrative
body and the army--the two great governing powers of France--remain
substantially unaffected; whereas the American civil war threatens a
complete territorial re-arrangement of the Union; it also portends a
fundamental change in the constitution, by which both its federal and
state elements will be recast."

Of this immense conflict Mr. Gladstone, like most of the leading statesmen
of the time, and like the majority of his countrymen, failed to take the
true measure. The error that lay at the root of our English misconception
of the American struggle is now clear. We applied ordinary political
maxims to what was not merely a political contest, but a social
revolution. Without scrutiny of the cardinal realities beneath, we
discussed it like some superficial conflict in our old world about
boundaries, successions, territorial partitions, dynastic preponderance.
The significance of the American war was its relation to slavery. That war
arose from the economic, social, and political consequences that flowed
from slavery--its wasteful cultivation, the consequent need for extension
of slave territory, the probable revival of the accursed African trade,
the constitution of slave-holders as the sole depositaries of social
prestige and political power. Secession was undertaken for the purpose of
erecting into an independent state a community whose whole structur