The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 | Page 2

was opposed in the greater part of the North-West, and in extensive districts of the North. She was not even invited to join the proposed confederacy. Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware were decided in their support of the protective policy, while Tennessee, Missouri, and North Carolina were divided on the question. Mr. Calhoun himself, the very prophet of nullification, could not obliterate the memory of his own former opinions, and it was difficult to induce the people to co?perate in overthrowing the Federal Government, simply for adopting a policy which the very authors of this movement had themselves so recently thoroughly approved.
Thus, opinion was broken into fragments; and nowhere outside of South Carolina did it acquire sufficient unanimity and power to impart any great momentum to the revolutionary design. Besides, in the absence of clear and deep convictions, the question itself was of such a nature, that strong passions could not easily spring from it. The interests involved were not necessarily in conflict; their opposition was more apparent than real, so that an adjustment could readily be made without sacrifice of principle. In short, the subject of dispute did not contain within itself the elements of civil war, capable of development to that extreme, at the time and under the circumstances when the futile attempt at separation was made. Doubtless, the sinister exertions of restless and ambitious men, acting upon ignorant prejudices, might, under some circumstances, have engendered opinions, even upon the tariff question, sufficiently strong and violent for the production of civil commotion. Had the conditions been more favorable to the plot; had the conspirators of that day been as well prepared as those of 1861; had they been equally successful in sowing dissatisfaction and hatred in the minds of the Southern people; had they found in Gen. Jackson the weak and pliant instrument of treason which James Buchanan afterward became in the hands of Davis and his coadjutors, the present rebellion might have been anticipated, and the germ of secession wholly extirpated and destroyed, in the contest which would then have ensued. The Union would doubtless have been maintained, and, in the end, strengthened; the fatal element of discord would scarcely have survived to work and plot in secret for more than a quarter of a century. It is true, slavery would have remained; but in the absence of other causes, slavery would not necessarily have brought the country to the present crisis. Providence may have so ordered the events of that day as to leave the revolutionary element in existence, in order that it might eventually fasten upon slavery as the instrument of its treason, and thus bring this system, condemned alike by the lessons of experience and by the moral sense of mankind, to that complete eventual destruction, which seems to be inevitably approaching.
The idea of an independent Southern confederacy, to be constituted of a fragment of the Union, survived the contest of 1832, and has been cherished with zeal and enthusiasm, by a small party of malcontents, from that day to this. Either from honest conviction or from the syren seductions of ambition, or perhaps from that combination of both which so often misleads the judgment of the wisest and best of men, this party has pursued its end with unrivalled zeal and consummate tact, never for a single moment abating its efforts to convince the South of the advantages of separation. But all its ability and all its untiring labors failed to make any serious impression, until the great and powerful interest of slavery was enlisted in the cause, and used as the means of reaching the feelings, and arousing the prejudices of the Southern people. The theories of nullification and secession, while accepted by many leading minds in that section, never made any serious impression upon the mass of the people. Indeed, it may be said with truth, that the honest instincts of the people invariably rejected these pernicious and dangerous theories, whenever they were distinctly involved in the elections. Nevertheless, there was an undercurrent of opinion in favor of them: the minds of the people were familiarized with the doctrines, and thus made ready to embrace them, whenever they should be satisfied it was indispensable to their safety and liberty to avail themselves of their benefit.
These abstract principles, however industriously and successfully taught, would not of themselves have availed to urge the people on to the desperate contest into which they have been madly precipitated. The dogma of the right of secession was not left a mere barren idea: it was accompanied with constant teachings respecting the incompatibility of interests, and the inevitable conflict, between the North and the South; the superiority of slavery over every other form of labor; and the imminent danger of the overthrow of this benign institution by Northern