s in South Carolina and in Louisiana would
have been not only morally but physically impossible in the earlier
years of the republic. "The people" in those States, and to a certain
extent in all the States, but chiefly at the South, has not the same
meaning that it had three-quarters of a century ago. Over the whole
country the conditions of our political problem have changed; but most
of all there; and the result is a strain upon our political
institutions, and even upon our social institutions, which taxes their
stability to the utmost. The present crisis is only inferior in its
gravity to that which preceded the attempted secession; and now as then
South Carolina takes the lead. But serious as the peril is, we shall
pass through it safely. We did not emerge safely from the greater
danger, to be overwhelmed by the less. Wisdom and firmness in the
highest degree are demanded by the emergency; but wisdom and firmness
will control it, and whatever measures may become necessary we may be
sure that they will be fraught with no peril to our liberties, or to
the stability of our Government. The nervous apprehension exhibited by
some people that any grave political disturbance and consequent
manifestation of power on the part of the central Government is likely
to end in a usurpation, and an enslavement of the American people, may
be surely characterized, if not as weak, at least as unwarranted. Think
of it coolly for a moment, and see how absurd it is. Any man born and
bred in the United States ought to be ashamed to entertain such a notion
for a moment. If we look back through the long and weary years of our
civil war, we shall find that mistakes were made on the side of the
arbitrary exercise of power, from which a few individuals suffered; but
indefensible as some of these were, according to the strict letter of
the law, we can now see their real harmlessness to the public as clearly
as we see the error of those who committed them. At no time have our
liberties been in less peril than when the President of the United
States had under his absolute command an army larger than that ever
actually controlled by any monarch (fables and exaggerations allowed
for), and when the warrant of the Secretary of War would have lodged any
man in a Federal fortress. We see now the folly of the vaticinations
against the endurance of our liberty which were uttered by many foreign
wiseacres and some weak-kneed natives. Whatever may come of our