timents of
the people. The confederated form of government, therefore, almost of
necessity originated the antagonism of Free States against Slave States;
while, at the same time, and from the same cause, it enabled the
opposite sections to give infinitely greater force and effect to this
antagonism, than would have been possible under any other
constitutional conditions. Rebellion might possibly have been initiated
within the bosom of a consolidated republic, and such a government might
well have been broken into two or more fragments; but this would have
been far less likely to happen in that case than in existing
circumstances. At all events, there would have been no room for the
dangerous doctrine of secession, and that plausible pretext would have
been wanting to the incipient rebellion; nor would there have been
anything equivalent to the State organizations which unfortunately
afforded the ready means of immediate and most effective combination.
The inestimable advantages of our complex political system in avoiding
the necessary despotism of consolidated government, by establishing
local legislation and administration in a number of partially
independent States, were in some measure counterbalanced by a natural
tendency to discord among the parts, and a capacity for independent
action in support and perpetuation of dangerous divergencies of opinion
and policy. If some States could repudiate slave labor, and gradually
build the fabric of their prosperity on the safer basis of universal
education, others could, with equal disregard of everything but their
own will and fancied interests, cherish and encourage the original
system of servile subordination and compulsory ignorance of the laboring
class, with which all the States started into their career of
independence at the commencement of the Revolution. And, unhappily, both
parties to this discordant social action were unrestrained by any
constitutional obligation, or by any common authority whatever, in the
indulgence, within their respective limits, of mutual hatred and
vituperation, with all those numberless and exasperating injuries which
no law can either notice or redress. These conflicting capabilities,
with their attendant dangers, lurked in the body of our political
organization from the very beginning. They were born with it; they grew
with its growth, and strengthened with its strength, until the fatal
hour when rebellion undertook the wicked work of its