to justice and right, frugality and economy,
as applicable to the body politic and to individual life, a recurrence
to fundamental principles, are of prime importance.

As a people we must, if possible, preserve what remains of the
Constitution and of the federative system. Sober, honest purpose can
reform some abuses. Imperious necessity will compel the North to take
effective steps for restoring the violated purity of the Government. If
present tendencies are not arrested, liberty will be sacrificed. As the
tendency of every government is to excess, a constitution is more or
less perfect according as it is full of limitations of authority. The
grant and the distribution of public functions should be accompanied
with safeguards. Our Federal Constitution cautiously delegates to
various public functionaries certain powers of government, defines and
limits the powers thus delegated, and reserves to the people of the
States their sovereignty over all things not delegated. Our organic law
thus seeks to restrain the Government within narrow and prescribed
limits, to guard weaker and dissimilar interests against inequality, to
interpose efficient checks, to prevent the stronger from oppressing the
weaker. Ours is a government under a written compact, and _in its
purity the best ever devised_. The war between the States is much
misunderstood. It was a gigantic conflict of _political_ ideas, a
controversy, not for or between dynasties, but on the nature and
character and power of the Federal Government. Three things were
settled by the war:

1. Emancipation and citizenship of the negroes.

2. The surrender of any claim of resort to secession in case of dispute
as to powers of the Government, or as a remedy for violated compact.

3. The recognition of such a person as a citizen of the United States,
independent of citizenship in a State.

Besides these, nothing else of a political character was settled, and
the second was determined only by the stern arbitrament of war. The
right of search was, however, similarly adjusted, and the treaty of
peace effected at Ghent, on December 24, 1814, contains no allusion to
the _casus belli_. There are few, if any, who do not rejoice at the
accomplishment of the first. The mode of emancipation was not such as
we would have chosen; but as the problem baffled the wisdom of all the
statesmen of the past, we may as well be grateful that African slavery
no longer exists to perplex and confoun