AUTHOR NO SECTIONALIST.

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in its various aspects and bearings, that the world has yet known. In truth, I shall aim only to present, in as simple and perspicuous language as possible, a series of remarkable occurrences, running through a period of some twenty years or more, accompanied by sober and impartial delineations of character, and personal anecdotes, more or less illustrative of public events, with some account of the rival movements of parties, and the characteristic acts and utterances of acknowledged party leaders. Having, at a period in my past life not yet remote, been thrown into contact, in the councils of the nation, with a large number of our public men of great distinction and influence, and having held relations more or less familiar with a few of the most eminent among them, I am not without a hope of being able to revive some gratifying and instructive reminiscences of illustrious personages now no longer living, as well as of others yet fortunately surviving, which will not prove altogether uninteresting to such as may glance over these pages. It having been my fortune, though born in a Southern state, to have resided for considerable periods in both the great sections of our now reconciled country, and having contracted the most delicate and endearing ties, both social and domestic, in each of them, I dare to presume that, in the execution of the task which I have assumed, I shall be able, in a great degree, if not altogether, to avoid the exhibition of any thing like a decided local bias. I shall at once give notice that I do not by any means agree in opinion with those who assert that the gigantic military struggle from which we have but just emerged was, to any considerable extent, the result of what has been so

vociferously bruited as an "irrepressible conflict of antagonisms imbedded in the very nature of our heterogeneous institutions;" and, with all proper courtesy and deference, I shall venture to make direct issue with those, wheresoever they shall be found, who undertake to promulgate the notion that "the successive compromises whereby" civil war, with all its attendant horrors, "was so long put off," were, after all, but "deplorable mistakes, detrimental to our national character."* I shall, on the contrary, endeavor to maintain, more by an array of irresistible facts than by any effort of over-subtle reasoning, or by ingenious appeals to long-standing prejudices, that the fearful domestic troubles in which our noble republic has been so recently involved could not possibly have arisen but for the most unskillful and blundering management of men in power-the incessant agitation of sectional factionists, both in the North and in the South, and the unwise disregard of that august spirit of conciliation and compromise in which our complex frame of government is known to have had its origin, and to the faithful cultivation of which, if it be destined to endure for future ages, it must undoubtedly owe both its preservation and its maintenance.

Without in the least degree calling in question the patriotism or sincerity of others, I may be permitted to say that no dogma more fraught with mischief could possibly have been set afloat among the American people, or one better calculated, if widely diffused, to undermine the sacred compact of union established by our fathers, than that which has just been alluded to. Let two considera

* Extract from Mr. Greeley's "American Conflict."

IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT.

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ble segments or classes of a free and enlightened people any where be once induced conscientiously to believe. that such an irremovable incompatibility of essential interests exists between them that the permanent repose and happiness of the whole, or of certain of its parts, will be impossible, except by a great and fearful sacrifice on the one side or on the other, and it is most obvious that exciting thoughts and schemes of separation, and even of armed collision, would not be very long in making themselves manifest. Such, in fact, is known to have been the precise condition of things in the early days of the Roman republic, between the Patricians and the Plebeians; and hence certain noted attempts on the part of the weaker class in Rome, and the one which deemed itself oppressed, to provide security against future injuries by secession to Mons Sacer. So it was also with the people of the American colonies in the last century, when, becoming convinced that it was not at all consistent with their safety and happiness that they should remain longer under British rule, they boldly erected the all-inspiring standard of independence. The successful propagation of this theory of an "irrepressible conflict" of hostile forces, in two different sections of the same country, it is evident, must generate "geographical parties;" against the formation of which, Washington, in his Farewell Address, so solemnly and so pathetically warned his countrymen. The continued existence of these geographical parties, when once fairly organized, as our melancholy experience has now demonstrated, must naturally beget schemes of territorial partition; which, however peacefully and quietly put in execution, if resisted on the part of those

who shall chance to feel that they would be deeply injured thereby, more especially if the latter party shall suppose itself to possess adequate means of prevention, must inevitably lead to a civil war, more or less serious and protracted. And it is plain that the danger of such a result must be very greatly increased, if, in addition to the influences described, the opinion should be given currency that the antagonism asserted to exist is organic and permanent in its character, not growing out of interests superficial and temporary in their nature, and therefore subject to easy processes of modification and amelioration in one mode or another, but solid, enduring, and "imbedded in the very nature" of "institutions" thus solemnly adjudged to be "heterogeneous." Washington and his illustrious associates of a former age taught no such perilous and visionary doctrine; nor did the great statesmen who succeeded them in the administration of the government for several successive generations at all suspect the existence of any such fatal tendency to discord and domestic feud to be lurking in the very vitals of our civil system. I am not prepared to assert that this "irrepressible conflict" theory originated either in the North or in the South exclusively. I know that a distinguished citizen of the State of New York has been given credit for the first formal promulgation of it; and recent occurrences would seem to indicate that this gentleman still firmly adheres to his well-known declaration on this subject. Certain it is, though, that I have heard this same radical incompatibility of interests between the Northern and Southern states of the Union-between that portion of the republic recognized until recently as the slave

JOHN C. CALHOUN.

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holding one, and that which was non-slaveholding in its character-as earnestly urged, and as elaborately insisted upon also by certain well-known sectional politicians south of Mason and Dixon's line, as it ever could have been by individuals of the most extreme opinions on this subject to the north of that same mystical parallel of latitude. I only assert what I know to be true when I state that, for several years antecedent to his death, John C. Calhoun, one of the most intellectual and pure-minded men that has ever lived, habitually gave expression among his friends to the opinion (which there is no doubt he most conscientiously entertained) that the slaveholding states of the South and the free states of the North would never be able again to live in harmony with each other after the abolition agitation had been for several years in progress, and that the former would soon find it indispensable to the preservation of their own domestic peace and safety to resort to the expedient of separation. Early in the eventful year of 1850 he avowed to me and to certain others, some of whom are yet living, his own painful and firmly-riveted conviction on this subject, and declared, in language of extraordinary emphasis, that he regarded a peaceful withdrawal from the Union as altogether practicable, provided its execution should be attempted under the lead of Maryland and Virginia; making known at the same time that he had already drawn out a Constitution for the new republic which he contemplated, in which the slaveholding principle had been given a predominant influence. Once, while discussing this interesting matter, he grew more enthusiastic than I ever saw him on any other occasion,