be made. Its
members were limited to two from each State, so that perfect equality
between the States existed in the Senate, though one State might have
four million inhabitants, and its neighbor not one hundred thousand. How
this worked in practice will appear from the statement of a few facts.
The year before the war began, the three leading States of the Union,
New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, had, in round numbers, ten millions of
people, and they sent six members to the Senate, or the same number with
Delaware, Florida, and Oregon, which had not above a twelfth part as
many. Massachusetts had seven times as many people as Rhode Island, and
each had two Senators. And so on through the whole roll of States. The
Senators are not popularly elected, but are chosen by the State
legislatures, and for the long term of six years, while Representatives
are elected by the people, every two years. The effect was, that the
Senate became the most powerful body in the Republic, which it really
ruled during the last twelve years of the old Union's existence, when
our Presidents were of the Forcible-Feeble order of men. The English
have Mr. Mason in their country, and they make much of him; and he will
tell them, if asked, that the Senate was the chief power of the American
State in its last days. That it was so testifies most strongly to the
fact that our polity is not democratic. Yet it was to the peculiar
constitution of the Senate that the seventy-two years of the Union were
due; and had nothing occurred to disturb its formation, we should have
had no Secession War. There was no danger that Secession could happen
but what came from the existence of Slavery; and so long as the number
of Slave States and of Free States remained the same, it was impossible
to convince any large portion of the slaveholders that their beloved
institution could be put in danger. But latterly the Free States got
ahead of the Slave States, and then the Secessionists had an opportunity
to labor to some purpose, and that opportunity they did not neglect. It
was to preserve the relative position of the two "sections" that the
Missouri Compromise was repealed in 1854, in the hope and expectation
that several new States might be made that should set up Slavery, and be
represented by slaveholders. Had this nefarious scheme succeeded, it
would have saved us from the Secession War; but it would have brought
other evils upon the country, which, in the long run,