re, but no more than from the
very nature of things was to have been expected; and I have no doubt
that they will decrease in number as time goes on, and will finally
disappear in the breaking-up of the color line in the South; and under
the influence of that great sentiment become more familiar and more
general every year, in favor of equal political rights to every American
citizen. Aside from these questions, there is nothing to perpetuate
alienation between the North and South. The new questions will lead to
new divisions on other lines; already the representatives of Alabama are
getting ready to stand with Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey in support
of the tariff on the iron industry; the spinners of the Dan and the Saco
will stand very soon with the spinners of the Willimantic and the
Merrimac in supporting the cotton interests, and now we see the
cotton-growers of the South and the wheat-growers of the Northwest
united in demanding a tariff for revenue only.

Common political interests, the ministry of social and political
intercourse, and perhaps higher than all, the pride of a common
citizenship are rapidly supplanting sectionalism among our own people
and leading us to stand together and work out our common destiny in
fraternal reunion. It has often occurred to me, as a cause of
thankfulness to Almighty God--and I believe He is guiding this Republic
so as to work out the problem of self-government for all mankind--that
the tremendous fact of the war has caused so little change in our system
of government; constitutional amendments have been so limited by
interpretation by the Supreme Court of the United States that they have
hardly added anything to the powers of the general Government or
impaired the powers of the States. The legislation following the war
when Congress seemed to have run mad with the theory that it could
legislate outside of the Constitution has to a large extent fallen under
the decisions of that high tribunal. One would have supposed that it
could have been certain that, considering the fact that the war was
waged to extend the extremest proposition of State sovereignty, that the
triumph of the Federal theory would have added enormously and
permanently to the powers of the general Government and diminished very
greatly and permanently the powers of the States. It is well for
Republican government that that evil was averted. We have our free State
Government, States still stand as the fortr