Our Federal Union [pp. 31-42]

OUR FEDERAL UNION.
death of the Southern section. It would reverse the very purposes for which all government is established. It would be,
as if the custodians themselves, invaded the citadel which they
were bound to defend. No State, no form of society, could
possibly survive a government inimical to its interests, repressing, limiting, and attacking, instead of protecting and advancing its social institutions. Here lies the conflict. Unless
such were the case, unless the North insisted an the equality
of the races and legislation in accordance with this doctrine,
so far as the powers of the federal government extend, which
is equivalent to a war of legislative enactment against the
South, destroying all order and civilization, there could be
no contest, no conflict, no essential antagonism between the sections. Under this state of facts, there is, has been, and will
continue to be, a conflict between the two sections, which must
endure until science shall have enlightened the North on the
great question of the races, and corrected her political philosophy, or until the South submits. And not all the traditions,
nor all the advantages, boundless as they are, of the Union,
have been sufficient to repress this cause of contest between the
two sections, for it arose out of their social organizations, and
was bound to manifest itself sooner or later in the government.
But, powerful as this cause has been, it alone was not sufficient to have produced this grievous alienation. Another has
been to it an important auxiliary and brought efficient reinforcemient; and this is, the intense sectionalism of the North.
As a general rule, men love their homes and friends, then
their State, next their section, and afterward the federal
government. It would be idle to spend time in illustrating
this truth-this affection for locality. It lhas been clearly exemplified under various circumstances in other countries; in
the Italian republics, in Spain, in France, in Germany. Indeed, no one can turn over a page of our own or of any history, or talk with the first comer on the highway, without
meeting proof of it. But it has been developed in an intense
form in the North from the fact that she has outstripped the
South in the career of material progress, in population, and,
consequently in political power. By excluding the South at
the very commencement from the common territories, and by
the adoption of a system of revenue to encourage Northern
manufactures and commerce, and of disbursements whereby
treasure was poured into that section, while the South, being
the exporting and the consuming section, has borne an overwhelmingly undue share of the expense of the government
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