ar was really fought over the question whether a
constitutionally formed nation dedicated to the proposition that all men
are created equal could permanently endure. The whole period from 1789
to 1865 was a critical period, during which the Constitution was being
tested and tried out.

During this testing many forms of secession were planned, and several
actual rebellions took place. In 1787 there was a Massachusetts
rebellion under Shays, over the question of taxation. In 1794 there was
what was known as the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania. In 1830 to 1835
there was a secession movement on in South Carolina, and President
Jackson put down that rebellion over the tariff. Then Daniel Webster
marked out the final lines of battle, entrenching the Constitution
against rebellious attempts. Webster fired the first shot of the war,
whose last shot was fired at Appomattox. Webster carried the flag that
Grant followed at Vicksburg, and shook out the folds of the banner that
was crimsoned with blood at Gettysburg. It was Webster's banner that
Anderson pulled down at Fort Sumter, under the stress of fire, and it
was Webster's banner that, four years later to an hour, the same General
Anderson pulled up on the same flagstaff at the same Fort Sumter.

During the period of the thirties and the forties, the conflict was a
conflict of words and arguments between men like Webster and Calhoun and
Garrison and Phillips. Later, the strife took on the form of a guerrilla
warfare, and here and there leaders like Lovejoy were martyred. At last
the strife entered into politics, when Douglas and Lincoln struggled for
the supremacy of their principles,--but always it was a question of
Constitutional interpretation, against whatever interest attacked the
"supreme law."

Soon the conflict entered the Church, and the American Tract Society,
to hold the gifts of slave owners, forbade the distributions of
Testaments to slaves, while the Bishop of New Jersey destroyed an
edition of the Prayer Book because it contained a picture of Ary
Scheffer's picture of "Christ the Emancipator," who was engaged in
striking the shackles from slaves. The bishop was quite willing that
Christ should open the eyes of the blind, make the deaf to hear and the
lame to walk, but as for Jesus freeing the slaves--well, that was too
much. Over the question of the Constitutional power of Congress to
resist the further extension of slavery in newly opened territories, the
w