ession to be unfounded in constitutional right, and yet denied the
power of the Government to prevent its own destruction. The threats of
an imperious band of traitors, operating upon the fears of a weak old
man, who was already implicated in the treason, drove him to the verge
of the abyss into which he was willing to plunge his country, but from
which, at the last moment, he drew back, dismayed at the thought of
sacrificing himself.

The doctrine of secession, long and laboriously taught, and the cognate
principles calculated to diminish the power of the Federal Government
and magnify that of the States, thus served to smooth the way, to lay
the track, upon which the engine of rebellion was to be started. But
there was still wanting the motive power which should impel the machine
and give it energy and momentum. Something tangible was
required--something palpable to the masses--on the basis of which
violent antagonisms and hatreds could be engendered, and fearful dangers
could be pictured to the popular imagination.

The protective system, loudly denounced as unequal and oppressive, as
well as unconstitutional, had proved wholly insufficient to arouse
rebellion in 1832. It would have proved equally so in 1861: but then the
ultra free trade tariff of 1856 was still in existence; and it continued
in force, until, to increase dissatisfaction, and invite the very system
which they pretended to oppose and deplore, the conspirators in
Congress, having power to defeat the 'Morrill Tariff,' deliberately
stepped aside, and suffered it to become a law. But this was merely a
piece of preliminary strategy intended to give them some advantage in
the great battle which was eventually to be fought on other fields. It
might throw some additional weight into their scale; it might give them
some plausible ground for hypocritical complaint; and might even, to
some extent, serve to hide the real ground of their movement; yet, of
itself, it could never be decisive of anything. It could neither justify
revolution in point of morals, nor could it blind the people of the
South to the terrible calamities which the experiment of secession was
destined to bring upon them.

Slavery alone, with the vast material prosperity apparently created by
it, with the debatable and exciting questions, moral, political, and
social, which arise out of it, and with the palpable dangers, which, in
spite of every effort to deny it, plainly brood over the syste