egun between New England emigrants bent on founding a free
state, and Missouri border ruffians determined to make the new territory a
slaveholding addition to the South, might have roused the whole North and
West to the imminence of the peril, by which the safety of the Union was
threatened.

But neither the struggle in Kansas, nor the strange and piteous episode
which grew out of it, of John Brown's attempt to excite an insurrection in
Virginia, and his execution by the government of that State, did more than
startle the North with a nine days' wonder out of its apathetic
indifference. The Republican party, it is true, gained adherents, and
acquired strength by degrees; and Mr. Buchanan's term of office
approaching its expiration, it became apparent that the Democratic party
was about to lose its supremacy, and the slaveholders their dominion; and
no sooner was this evident than the latter threw off the mask, and
renounced their allegiance to the Union. In a day--in an hour
almost--those stood face to face as mortal enemies who were citizens of
the same country, subjects of the same government, children of the same
soil; and the North, incredulous and amazed, found itself suddenly
summoned to retrieve its lost power and influence, and assert the dignity
of the insulted Union against the rebellious attempt of the South to
overthrow it.

But it was late for them to take that task in hand. For years the conduct
of the government of the United States had been becoming a more desperate
and degraded _jobbery_, one from which day by day the Northern gentlemen
of intelligence, influence, and education withdrew themselves in greater
disgust, devoting their energies to schemes of mere personal advantage,
and leaving the commonweal with selfish and contemptuous indifference to
the guidance of any hands less nice and less busy than their own.

Nor would the Southern planters--a prouder and more aristocratic race than
the Northern merchants--have relished the companionship of their
fellow-politicians more than the latter, but _their_ personal interests
were at stake, and immediately concerned in their maintaining their
predominant influence over the government; and while the Boston men wrote
and talked transcendentalism, and became the most accomplished of
_aestetische_ cotton spinners and railroad speculators, and made the shoes
and cow-hides of the Southerners, the latter made their laws; (I believe
New Jersey is really the gre