rritories, and with the sole object of obtaining
sectional control and personal promotion by means of popular agitation.

The success attending this artifice was remarkable. To such an extent
was it made available, that Northern indignation was aroused on the
absurd accusation that the South had destroyed "that sacred instrument,
the compromise of 1820." The internecine war which raged in Kansas for
several years was substituted for the promised peace under the operation
of the natural laws regulating migration to new countries. For the
fratricide which dyed the virgin soil of Kansas with the blood of those
who should have stood shoulder to shoulder in subduing the wilderness;
for the frauds which corrupted the ballot-box and made the name of
election a misnomer--let the authors of "squatter sovereignty" and the
fomenters of sectional hatred answer to the posterity for whose peace
and happiness the fathers formed the Federal compact.

In these scenes of strife were trained the incendiaries who afterward
invaded Virginia under the leadership of John Brown; and at this time
germinated the sentiments which led men of high position to sustain,
with their influence and their money, this murderous incursion into the
South.[13]

Now was seen the lightning of that storm, the distant muttering of which
had been heard so long, and against which the wise and the patriotic had
given solemn warning, regarding it as the sign which portended a
dissolution of the Union.

Diversity of interests and of opinions among the States of the
Confederation had in the beginning presented great difficulties in the
way of the formation of a more perfect union. The compact was the result
of compromise between the States, at that time generally distinguished
as navigating and agricultural, afterward as Northern and Southern. When
the first census was taken, in 1790, there was but little numerical
difference in the population of these two sections, and (including
States about to be admitted) there was also an exact equality in the
number of States. Each section had, therefore, the power of
self-protection, and might feel secure against any danger of Federal
aggression. If the disturbance of that equilibrium had been the
consequence of natural causes, and the government of the whole had
continued to be administered strictly for the general welfare, there
would have been no ground for complaint of the result.

Under the old Confederation the Southe