on defence, promote the general
welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
posterity_, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United
States of America.' Every one of the objects therein specified is, in
the baleful light of the rebellion, a plea for the amendment.

We are aware that this preamble has heretofore served as a basis for the
stanchest conservatism, and wisely so. We are of those who have always
contended that the 'blessings of liberty' are best secured by whatever
tends most to strengthen the Union--the asylum and hope of liberty,
without which liberty, disorganized and unprotected, were a vain show.
We are of that opinion still, and therefore support the amendment,
because we are for strengthening the Union and making it 'more perfect.'
We have not changed: circumstances have changed. What was formerly
conservatism is now radicalism, and radicalism is now the true
conservatism. For the period is one of transition, a crisis period, when
these two forces, to be of use, must be interfused, and thus become a
combined power of reform.

So long as the cotton and slaveholding interest could be held in check
and kept measurably subordinate to the supremacy of the Constitution,
there was hope that eventually the steadily-increasing forces of free
labor would overpower the gradually-decreasing forces of slave labor. It
was believed that by the silent action of natural laws freedom would, in
the long run, assert itself superior, and the ideal of our Government,
universal freedom, would thus at last become a reality and fact. Such,
we have been taught to believe, was the doctrine of the statesmanship of
1850. Such was the underlying argument of Webster's great 7th of March
speech--the enduring monument of his unselfish patriotism, seeking only
the good of his whole country. Such was his meaning when he declared
that the condition of the territories was fixed by an 'irrepealable
law,' needing no irritating legislation to assure their freedom.

Contrary to the hopes of our fathers, the slave system had prospered and
grown strong--chiefly because of the impetus given to it by the growth
of cotton, as was clearly shown by Webster in the speech just noted. We
suppose no candid reader of our history will deny this point. But the
system had no vital force within itself, and could not withstand those
laws of nature and free emigration to which we have adverted. It sought
protective legislati