d their comprehension, often disowned or scorned by
them, but which mould their destiny and lead them to a victory spite of
themselves. The people always grow without conscious plan or method, and
rarely know their own strength. But there are always a few great men who
represent their destiny, and, often against their will, direct them in
the path to liberty. History will record the names of three great men
who, during the last forty years, have been the most notable figures in
this consolidation of the people in this republic; three men that the
implacable hatred of the Slave Power has singled out from all other
Northern men as special objects of infamy; men who represent the
industrial, moral, and political phases of the people's growth to
supremacy. Each came when he was wanted, and faithfully did his work;
and their history is the chronicle of this advance of liberty in the
republic.

The first of these men was De Witt Clinton, of New York. No Northern man
so early discovered the deep game of the Slave Power as he. He was the
ablest statesman of the North in the days when the aristocracy of the
South was just effecting its consolidation. He was a prominent candidate
for the Presidency, and was scornfully put down by the power that ruled
at Richmond. The slaveholders knew him for their clear-headed enemy, and
drove him out of the arena of national politics. Never was political
defeat so auspicious. Cured of the political ambition of his youth, Mr.
Clinton turned the energies of his massive genius to the _industrial
consolidation of the North_. He saw that all future political triumph of
liberty must rest on the triumph of free labor. He anticipated the
coming greatness of the Northwest, and boldly devoted his life to the
inauguration of that system of internal improvements which has made the
Northern States the mighty, free industrial empire it now is. Within the
period of ten years lying nearest 1820, the people, under the lead of
Clinton and his associates, had brought into active operation the three
great agencies of free labor--the steamer, the canal, the railroad;
while our manufacturing industry dates from the same period.

This was the providential movement of a great people, organizing a
method of labor which should overthrow the American aristocracy. Of
course the people did not know what all this meant; thousands of the men
who were foremost in organizing Northern industry did not suspect the
end; but De W