ve and peculiar merits.

As the United States have vindicated their national unity and
integrity, and are preparing to take a new start in history, nothing is
more important than that they should take that new start with a clear
and definite view of their national constitution, and with a distinct
understanding of their political mission in the future of the world.
The citizen who can help his countrymen to do this will render them an
important service and deserve well of his country, though he may have
been unable to serve in her armies and defend her on the battle-field.
The work now to be done by American statesmen is even more difficult
and more delicate than that which has been accomplished by our brave
armies. As yet the people are hardly better prepared for the political
work to be done than they were at the outbreak of the civil war for the
military work they have so nobly achieved. But, with time, patience,
and good-will, the difficulties may be overcome, the errors of the past
corrected, and the Government placed on the right track for the future.

It will hardly be questioned that either the constitution of the United
States is very defective or it has been very grossly misinterpreted by
all parties. If the slave States had not held that the States are
severally sovereign, and the Constitution of the United States a simple
agreement or compact, they would never have seceded; and if the Free
States had not confounded the Union with the General government, and
shown a tendency to make it the entire national government, no occasion
or pretext for secession would have been given. The great problem of
our statesmen has been from the first, How to assert union without
consolidation, and State rights without disintegration? Have they, as
yet, solved that problem? The war has silenced the State sovereignty
doctrine, indeed, but has it done so without lesion to State rights?
Has it done it without asserting the General government as the supreme,
central, or national government? Has it done it without striking a
dangerous blow at the federal element of the constitution? In
suppressing by armed force the doctrine that the States are severally
sovereign, what barrier is left against consolidation? Has not one
danger been removed only to give place to another?

But perhaps the constitution itself, if rightly understood, solves the
problem; and perhaps the problem itself is raised precisely through
misunderstand