ttention of historians,
and it is, no doubt, the most striking and painful example of the
phenomenon in our history. But there are older, and perhaps in the long
run more enduring examples of the play of sectional forces than the
slavery struggle, and there are various sections besides North and
South.

Indeed, the United States is, in size and natural resources, an empire,
a collection of potential nations, rather than a single nation. It is
comparable in area to Europe. If the coast of California be placed along
the coast of Spain, Charleston, South Carolina, would fall near
Constantinople; the northern shores of Lake Superior would touch the
Baltic, and New Orleans would lie in southern Italy. Within this vast
empire there are geographic provinces, separate in physical conditions,
into which American colonization has flowed, and in each of which a
special society has developed, with an economic, political and social
life of its own. Each of these provinces, or sections, has developed its
own leaders, who in the public life of the nation have voiced the needs
of their section, contended with the representatives of other sections,
and arranged compromises between sections in national legislation and
policy, almost as ambassadors from separate countries in a European
congress might make treaties.

Between these sections commercial relations have sprung up, and economic
combinations and contests may be traced by the student who looks beneath
the surface of our national life to the actual grouping of States in
congressional votes on tariff, internal improvement, currency and
banking, and all the varied legislation in the field of commerce.
American industrial life is the outcome of the combinations and contests
of groups of States in sections. And the intellectual, the spiritual
life of the nation is the result of the interplay of the sectional
ideals, fundamental assumptions and emotions.

In short, the real federal aspect of the nation, if we penetrate beneath
constitutional forms to the deeper currents of social, economic and
political life, will be found to lie in the relation of sections and
nation, rather than in the relation of States and nation. Recently
ex-secretary Root emphasized the danger that the States, by neglecting
to fulfil their duties, might fall into decay, while the national
government engrossed their former power. But even if the States
disappeared altogether as effective factors in our national