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with it the perpetuity of the states; their mutual relation makes us what we are, and in our political system their connection is indissoluble. The whole can not exist without the parts, nor the parts without the whole. So long as the Constitution of the United States endures, the states will endure; the destruction of the one is the destruction of the other; the preservation of the one is the preservation of the other.

"I have thus explained my views of the mutual relations of the Constitution and the states, because they unfold the principles on which I have sought to solve the momentous question and overcome the appalling difficulties that met me at the very commencement of my administration. It has been my steadfast object to escape from the sway of momentary passions, and to derive a healing policy from the fundamental and unchanging principles of the Constitution."

It is not in my nature to be the adulator of men in power; besides, I have lived too long, and have experienced too many of the changes to which the fortunes of men are subjected in this state of being, to expect much or to fear much from those who any where wield the sceptre of authority. But I can not, in justice to myself, refrain from declaring that, if President Johnson shall persevere to the end, as I do not doubt that he will, in the execution of his admirable scheme of reconstruction, it is evident that the most signal success will crown his patriotic efforts. Ninety-nine hundredths of his country. men every where will, I am satisfied, accord to him their warmest support; and when the good work of pacification shall have been once accomplished, he will be justly

recognized by all truly virtuous and enlightened men as the restorer of his country's liberties and the renovator of its glories. In view of the great object, now apparently almost attained-the renewal of that noble federative system devised by our fathers, but which the earthquake shock of civil war has so seriously disordered--how contemptible appear the puny sophisticators of the hour, who are painfully taxing their overheated brains with the utterly unprofitable question whether or not the states lately in rebellion did or did not succeed in getting out of the pale of the Union by the now exploded expedient of secession! One thing seems to be sufficiently certain these lately seceding states are at present sufficiently in the Union to co-operate most promptly and ef fectively in the great constitutional amendment which has forever extinguished slavery on this continent, and deprived a vaporing and restless fanaticism of that food upon which it has heretofore banqueted and grown fearfully potential for mischief. The special message of the President, which is placed in my hand while I now write, sustained as it is by the manly and magnanimous report of General Grant, supplies full assurance as to the state of public feeling in the South in regard to the condition of things brought about inevitably by the war, and renders it manifest that, so far as the great body of our vot ing population both North and South is concerned, a cordial and general reconcilement has been already consummated. We are now fully justified in expecting for our country the realization of all that national prosperity and happiness which the most sanguine of our statesmen formerly anticipated for her, before either abolition or seces

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sion had yet attempted to disturb the public repose, or, by their conflicting yet conjoint operation, had involved in peril our own hopes of civil and religious freedom, and those of the whole world besides.

CONCLUSION.

In the present volume facts have been presented and reasonings stated which, it seems to me, leave no reasonable doubt as to what should be the present action of the government if it be desired to resuscitate the happy condition of things existing before the commencement of the war, the effect of which has been so deleteriously to discompose the wise and salutary system of checks and balances, without the existence of which a state of pure republican liberty would have been impossible. It is probable that in a second volume, drawn up under more favorable circumstances, and admitting greater freedom of exposition, many additional facts may be exhibited, somewhat bolder arguments be adduced, and numerous additional sketches of individual character and illustrative personal anecdotes be supplied, should the plan of this work seem to have secured a fair portion of the public favor. I shall close now, for the present, by an emphatic affirmation of a great truth, which I can not but hope has been already made sufficiently apparent, that the peculiar civic institutions framed by our fathers can not be made preservative of permanent freedom except by restoring as soon as possible the original coequality of

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the states, upon the essentiality of which Mr. Pinckney so cogently and eloquently insisted in the memorable Missouri struggle of 1819. Extinguish this coequality in any way, and, instead of a republic, we will necessarily bring into existence an imperial despotism, by whatever name called. Subject to enslavement the numer ous distinct communities formerly enjoying liberty, and vest the power of controlling all the domestic concerns of each of them in a central government, whether that central government shall consist of a Roman Senate, with an Imperator or military commander in chief at its head, or of an American Congress, with a similar commander-in-chief called President, empowered to coun. sel it in regard to all public questions, and it will not be possible to prevent the rapid concentration of all civil power in the legislative and executive department of the system first, and very soon thereafter the consolidation of all power in the hands of a single individual, which individual will, of course, be the executive officer who wields the war power. The experience of nations is uniform on this subject; and even had no such fatal example of the ruin of freedom heretofore occurred, it would really seem that a mere statement of this proposition, as a yet unproven theorem, ought to be sufficient to enforce the important truth referred to upon the most opaque intellect. I do not desire to be understood on this occasion as denying, nor is it indeed at all necessary for any purpose the attainment of which is at this moment desirable, that the government existing in Washington City was not, in order to preserve its own existence, fully justified in wielding all the powers which it

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is known, upon the ground of military necessity, to have employed; nor is it necessary either to dispute the proposition so earnestly insisted upon in certain quarters at present, that these vast powers, once seized upon, may continue to be wielded by that government permanently, if it shall choose to do so, over those unfortunate eleven millions of American people whom the terrible exigencies of war and the unwise perseverance in hostilities up to the moment when, as has been seen, they were compelled to submit unconditionally to the will of the conqueror. But the still graver and more vital question now is, Shall this sweeping enslavement be enforced, when such enforcement must inevitably result in the ultimate enslavement also of the additional nineteen millions of our whole federal population? In other words, would those in the two houses of Congress at this moment act wisely in pursuing such a course as all far-seeing and considerate statesmen would unite in assuring them must necessarily subject to despotic rule the very people who have selected them as THE defenders of their own liberties? I am afraid that unprejudiced men in future generations will be inclined to recognize the struggle now progressing in Washington City, in connection with President Johnson's reconstruction policy, as a struggle between philosophic and discriminating statesmen on the one side, and factionists and demagogues on the other. For, after all, what is the distinction between these two classes of individuals? I understand that a statesman is one who understands the concerns of his whole country, and who exercises also a kindly and providing care over all of these concerns for the general good of