tate constitution, the national and central one sends down
an iron arm, clasping them all by a firm bond to itself and to each
other. And in each, the grasp of this arm is riveted and double riveted,
above and below, by these two comprehensive, unmistakable articles,
without which the others had else been valueless; and for which the
framers of this great instrument are entitled to our lasting gratitude
and admiration.

The articles are these, viz.: Art. 6th, sec. 2d: 'This Constitution, and
the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof
... _shall be the supreme law of the land_ ... anything in the
constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.'

And art. 4th, sec. 4th: 'The United States shall _guarantee_ to every
State in the Union a _republican_ form of government, and shall protect
each of them against invasion....'

The first of these admits of no separation or secession. The second
preserves everywhere that form of government under which alone the
fullest political freedom can be enjoyed. In fighting, then, for the
Constitution, we fight for an undivided Union on the one hand, and, on
the other, for a Union that guarantees to each member of it that form of
government which secures the greatest liberty to those who live under
it. May we not, we say again, rest in an all but certain hope that the
Divine Being will see fit to preserve His own work? For such, though
accomplished through human agency, we feel constrained to believe, have
been this Union and its remarkable constitution.

We have regarded the Union as the culmination of a long series of
endeavors, so to call them, on the part of Providence, to bring men from
a social condition characterized by the multiplicity, diversity,
separation, antagonism, and hostility of independent, warring, petty
states, into that larger, higher form of political and social life, that
shall combine in itself the three conditions of unity--variety in unity,
and of the utmost liberty with order--as the soul and life of the
political body. And that it has also been the aim of Providence, in the
formation of this Union, to accomplish the above object on as large a
scale as possible, in the present moral and intellectual condition of
the race.

Can we be far wrong in such a view? Think of our republic embracing in
its wide extent, one, two, three, or more hundred millions of human
beings, all in political union, enjoying the largest