American merchantmen were indiscriminately seized on the high seas to be tied to British wharves to rot or to be towed into French ports to be confiscated. Mr. Jefferson, the President, issued his proclamation of embargo, closing every American port to sea commerce. The policy inflicted great inconvenience on New England. There was a universal protest there against it. Senator John Quincy Adams waited. on him privately, desiring an interview. The request was strange, for the feeling between the men had not been cordial in consequence of the conflict of their parties. Mr. Adams assured the President that the restlessness of New England under the commercial restraints of the Federal government had assumed very grave importance. Certain citizens of high influence were in negotiation with agents of the British government. It was expected as a result of this negotiation that New England ships and goods would be free from interruption from the British war vessels on the seas; that, without a formal declaration of secession the New England States, in reciprocity of favor with Great Britain, would suspend their relations with the government of the United States. The Senator assured the President that a repeal of the embargo was necessary to prevent a convention of New England States putting in force the agreement with the British agents. The President replied, that if the question was reduced to war with Great Britain, or the secession of several important States, he preferred war and would at once urge that the embargo, a peace measure, should be revoked. The Legislature of Massachusetts heard of Mr. Adams' talk with the President, and, in rebuke, chose his successor in the Senate. Seeing this, Mr. Adams promptly resigned.

Debating the repeal of the federal law impeding commerce, Mr. Josiah Quincy addressed the House. He had said. much for the cause of State Rights, he said more now. The planters of the South could live for years without a market, "but patriotism, to say the least, was a very inactive assistant " to the men of New England who saw their profits and their capital vanishing under a policy of federal government. "Touching the general nature of the instrument called (spoke Mr. Quincy), the Constitution of the United States, there is no obscurity; it has no fabled descent, like the Palladium of

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ancient Troy, from the heavens. Its origin is not confused by the mists of time, or hidden by the darkness of past or unexplored ages; it is the fabric of our day. Some now living had a share in its construction: all of us stood by and saw the rising of the edifice. There can be no doubt about its nature. It is a political compact. Are the three branches of this government owners of the farm, called the United States? I desire to thank Heaven, they are not. I hold my life, liberty and property, and the people of the State, from which I have the honor to be a Representative, hold theirs by a better tenure than any this national government can give! Sir, I know your virtue. And I thank the Great Giver of every good gift that neither the gentleman from Tennessee, nor his comrades, nor any, nor all the members of this House, nor of the other branch of the Legislature, nor the good gentleman who lives in the palace`yonder, nor all combined, can touch these, my essential rights, and those of my friends and constituents, except in a limited and prescribed way. No, sir. We hold these by the laws, customs and principles of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Behind her ample shield we find refuge and feel safety. I beg, gentlemen, not to act upon the principle, that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is their farm. Mr. Speaker, what is this liberty of which so much is said? Is it to walk about this earth, to breathe this air, and to partake of the common blessings of God's providence? The beasts of the field and the birds of the air unite with us in such privileges as these. But man boasts a purer and more ethereal temperature. * That which we call liberty is that principle on which the essential security of our liberty depends. It results from the limitation of our political system prescribed by the Constitution."

Mr. Madison succeeded Mr. Jefferson in the Presidency, receiving the electoral votes of all the States, except four in New England, and Delaware. On the demand of New England, Congress repealed the embargo act, but substituted the non-intercourse act, forbidding trade with England and France. The President was opposed to war, and Randolph was the leader of the peace policy. The expiration of Mr. Madison's term approached, and the New England States demanded the candidature of De Witt Clinton, to oppose him

for re-election, on a war platform. All the New England maritime States, with New York, New Jersey and Delaware, voted for Clinton. War, therefore, was indicated as a commercial policy. The war of 1812 opened. New England became discontented with its progress. The government ordered out the militia of those States, not by a call on the Governors but by a general draft. The government proposed to invade Canada, and the draft was a measure of preparation for that event. New England did not admit the right of the government to make conscripts of citizens of States. An issue with the government was made on this point. In truth, New England did not desire an army of invasion to disturb her active trade with Canada. Therefore, by invitation of Massachusetts, all the New England States met, December 14, 1814, at Hartford, Connecticut, in secret session, to take steps to withdraw from their federal relations, as six years before they were about to do on account of the embargo. In three weeks the victory of New Orleans and the treaty of peace which had, indeed, preceded the battle, occurred, and the measures of the Hartford convention were abandoned, and the revolutionary scheme there prepared was forgotten.

As these pages discuss political character, subjects of public conscience and tests of loyalty in States and populations, here and there, it is notable that the attitude of New England toward the Union at this period stood in marked contrast with the slave States. The South Carolina "triumvirate," Lowndes, Cheves and Calhoun lead the war party for "sailors rights and free trade," with Henry Clay in support. Harrison, Jackson, Scott, Hampton, Richard M. Johnson, were commanders in the army fighting for "sailors rights and free

representing all parts of the South. In 1816, the first Congress after peace, considered the policy of retaining the war tariff for the protection of manufacturers of the North. Calhoun supported the measure on the general principle, that "the liberty and union of this country are inseparable." The next year, finding sectional amity had not been restored, Calhoun declared from his place in the House, "we are under the imperious necessity to counteract every tendency to disunion;" and, inspired with that high motive, originated a system of internal improvements by the federal government

to be supported by the bonus of the bank of the United States, and the government dividends from that institution. He would confess, he said, that the Constitution was founded on positive principles and not on precedents, but "by giving a reasonable construction to the money power it exempts from the necessity of giving a forced and strained construction to the other enumerated powers." Enthused with his scheme, he laid out a grand system which would connect the lakes with the harbor of New York, by a government canal, and the Ohio with the Chesapeake. He would connect the Mississippi with every Atlantic port and improve the navigation of that stream from its mouth to its head waters. If Congress had the right to purchase the stream, it was clearly within the purview of that right to improve it for public use. Hardly a Southern leader, save John Randolph, of Roanoke, who saw the enduring wisdom of the impassioned utterances of Josiah Quincy, of Massachusetts, which the latter now prepared to abandon.

The fateful lull of party vigilance spread itself over the land. In 1816 Mr. Monroe was elected President, receiving the electoral vote of every State, save Massachusetts, even yet suspicious and wary, Connecticut and, the least of all, Delaware. In 1820 Mr. Monroe was re-elected, receiving the electoral vote of every State. This was the beginning of "the era of good feeling," and party lethargy, from which sprang woes unnumbered. John Quincy Adams and Benjamin W. Crowninshield, representing Massachusetts, John C. Calhoun, William H. Crawford and William Wirt, representing the South, filled up the ablest Cabinet, perhaps, that President ever convened, since Washington's. In this memorable period of eight years, sectional discord was fomented at every point of sectional contact. There were four great acts of government (1) the surrender of Texas, a part of the Louisiana purchase, to reconcile the North to the acquisition of Florida: (2) the enactment of the line 36° 30′ as a geographical limitation to Southern institutions in the enjoyment of the common domain, by which they were excluded, arbitrarily, from ninetenths and, conditionally, from all: (3) the enlargement of the definition of piracy to allow it to be applied to the only commerce which was specifically protected, and for twenty

years, by the letter of the Constitution, and upon which the institutions of the South were authoritatively founded, the African slave trade: (4) the regulation of commerce by a revenue law unequal in its burdens. The "era of good feeling" proved to be the season in which the sections mancuvred for position on the field of future conflict.

The political career of William Lowndes Yancey opened with the collision of the newly discovered wage or factory system resident in the Northern States, with the unmatured and phenomenally fruitful system of African servitude in the Southern States. The last was a recognized subject of compact in the conventional origin of the nation; the first as a social factor was then unknown. The masses were content and prosperous everywhere. The non-slaveholding farmers of the South lived on the hills, where pure water and wholesome air contributed to their enjoyment. In the fertile swamps, the sturdy black man "looked the sun in the eye" with impunity. It was even then alleged that slavery shut out white labor. It is only necessary here to speak of the survival of a very happy and powerful society ever advancing in material and moral force. No civilized society was so exempt from pauperism as the South, no population presented so small a proportion, in comparison with its aggregate numbers, of insane or individuals born to infirmities, idiocy, physical deformity or loss of one or more of the five senses. No test of manhood in its more exalted moral duties was more promptly or intelligently met than by the people of the South slaveholders and non-slaveholders. At the initial of the conflict of the sections there was a source of intensity from which it was fed not quite recognized, in the fullness of its influence, by either rival. I refer to the effect of the institutions of the sections upon the individual citizen in his appreciation of liberty. Every citizen of the South who was theoretically a free man was actually free, to an unparalleled degree. Save in the examples of those relatively few persons who received wages or salaries in cities, the occupied classes were not, by bell-clapper, rung in or rung out of work. Each individual placed upon his time and his toil his own estimate of value, as was no where else done in a society equally