es between the masters and the
Government, and between the Government, impregnated with Slavery, and
the Northern citizen, these touch us sharply, and if not wisely met,
will yet scourge us with thorns! Indeed, I cannot say that I believe
that New England and the near North will be affected _locally_, and
immediately by an adverse issue of the great national struggle now
going on. But the North will be an utterly dead force in the American
nation. She will be rolled up in a corner, like a cocoon waiting for
its transmigration. The whole North will become provincial; it will be
but a fringe to a nation whose heart will beat in the South.

But New-England was not raised up by Divine Providence to play a mean
part in the world's affairs.

Remember, that New-England brought to America those principles which
every State in the Union has more or less thoroughly adopted.

New-England first formed those institutions which liberty requires for
beneficient activity; and from her, both before and since the
Revolution, they have been copied throughout the Land. Having given to
America its ideas and its institutions, I think the North is bound to
stand by them.

Until 1800, the North had distinctive national influence, and gave
shape, in due measure, to national _policy_, as she had before to
national institutions.

Then she began to recede before the rising of another power. For the
last fifty years, upon the national platform have stood arrayed two
champions in mortal antagonism--New-England and the near
North--representing personal freedom, civil liberty, universal
education, and a religious spirit which always sympathises with men
more than with Governments.

The New-England theory of Government has always been in its
element--first, independent men; then democratic townships; next
republican States, and, in the end, a Federated Union of Republican
States. All her economies, her schools, her policy, her industry, her
wealth, her intelligence, have been at agreement with her theory and
policy of Government. Yet, New-England, strong at home, compact,
educated, right-minded; has gradually lost influence, and the whole
North with her.

The Southern League of States, have been held together by the cohesive
power of Common Wrong. Their industry, their policy, their whole
interior, vital economy, have been at variance with the apparent
principles of their own State Governments, and with the National
Institutions under which t