tion there were, of
course,--the perplexities of the situation, the irritation of criticism
from without,--but Nature has no use for excuses. If there is a cancer
in the system it is useless to plead the expense of the surgery or the
pain of the knife. The alternative is simple--removal or death.

It is always impossible to distinguish closely in the causes of events
between the action of human will and the wider forces which we call
Nature or Providence. But in some eras we distinguish more clearly than
in others the effect of human personalities. For example, in the making
of the Constitution we see a difficult situation taken wisely and
resolutely in hand by a group of strong men; they made themselves a part
of Fate. But in the fluctuating history of slavery, with its final
catastrophe, we seem to be looking at elemental movements; masses of men
drifting under impulses, with no leadership adequate to the occasion.
The men who seemingly might have mastered the situation, and brought it
to a peaceful and right solution, either could not or would not do it.

What happened was, that two opposite social systems, existing within the
same political body, came into rivalry, into hostility, and at last into
direct conflict. In the early stages, slavery had on its side the
advantage of an established place under the law, the support of its
local communities becoming more and more determined, the long-time
indifference and inertia of the free States, custom, conservatism,
timidity, race prejudice. But against all this were operating steadily
two tremendous forces. In the race for industrial advantage which is at
last the decisive test, free society was superior to slave society by as
much as the freeman is superior to the slave. The advantage of the
Northern farmer or mechanic over the negro slave was the measure of the
advantage of the North over the South. In increase of wealth; in
variety, intensity, and productiveness of social life; in immigration;
in intellectual progress, the free States outstripped the slave States
by leaps and bounds. And, again, in the conscience of humanity,--in
mankind's sense of right and wrong, which grows ever a more potent
factor in the world's affairs,--the tide was setting steadily and
swiftly against slavery. To impatient reformers who, as Horace Mann
said, were always in a hurry, while God never is,--the tide might seem
motionless or refluent, as to him who looks hastily from the ocean
shor