It was thought that eleven states which had struggled so hard
to escape from the federal tie could not be re-admitted to voluntary
co-operation in the general government, but must henceforth be held as
conquered territory,--a most dangerous experiment for any free people to
try. Yet within a dozen years we find the old federal relations resumed
in all their completeness, and the disunion party powerless and
discredited in the very states where once it had wrought such mischief.
Nay more, we even see a curiously disputed presidential election, in
which the votes of the southern states were given almost with unanimity
to one of the candidates, decided quietly by a court of arbitration; and
we see a universal acquiescence in the decision, even in spite of a
general belief that an extraordinary combination of legal subtleties
resulted in adjudging the presidency to the candidate who was not
really elected.
Such has been the result of the first great attempt to break up the
federal union in America. It is not probable that another attempt can
ever be made with anything like an equal chance of success. Here were
eleven states, geographically contiguous, governed by groups of men who
for half a century had pursued a well-defined policy in common, united
among themselves and marked off from most of the other states by a
difference far more deeply rooted in the groundwork of society than any
mere economic difference,--the difference between slave-labour and
free-labour.
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