ing of the constitution. Our statesmen have recognized no
constitution of the American people themselves; they have confined
their views to the written constitution, as if that constituted the
American people a state or nation, instead of being, as it is, only a
law ordained by the nation already existing and constituted. Perhaps,
if they had recognized and studied the constitution which preceded that
drawn up by the Convention of 1787, and which is intrinsic, inherent in
the republic itself, they would have seen that it solves the problem,
and asserts national unity without consolidation, and the rights of the
several States without danger of disintegration. The whole controversy,
possibly, has originated in a misunderstanding of the real constitution
of the United States, and that misunderstanding itself in the
misunderstanding of the origin and constitution of government in
general. The constitution, as will appear in the course of this essay
is not defective; and all that is necessary to guard against either
danger is to discard all our theories of the constitution, and return
and adhere to the constitution itself, as it really is and always has
been.

There is no doubt that the question of Slavery had much to do with the
rebellion, but it was not its sole cause. The real cause must be
sought in the program that had been made, especially in the States
themselves, in forming and administering their respective governments,
as well as the General government, in accordance with political
theories borrowed from European speculators on government, the
so-called Liberals and Revolutionists, which have and can have no
legitimate application in the United States. The tendency of American
politics, for the last thirty or forty years, has been, within the
several States themselves, in the direction of centralized democracy,
as if the American people had for their mission only the reproduction
of ancient Athens. The American system is not that of any of the
simple forms of government, nor any combination of them. The attempt
to bring it under any of the simple or mixed forms of government
recognized by political writers, is an attempt to clothe the future in
the cast-off garments of the past. The American system, wherever
practicable, is better than monarchy, better than aristocracy, better
than simple democracy, better than any possible combination of these
several forms, because it accords more nearly with the princip