Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/281

 THE CIVIL WAR THROUGH SOUTHERN GLASSES 267

feature of this American federation of the states consisted in the fact that the bond between them was a purely voluntary bond, each "sovereign and independent" member entering of its own free will into the mutual compact. Consequently, so far as the political experiment of a voluntary union of sovereign states is concerned, the Civil War did not conserve the end proposed, inasmuch as it is a manifest moral impossibility to preserve a voluntary union by compulsion.

In point of fact, the guns of the Civil War shattered forever the American "republic." The American "nation" it has been since 1865. The American "empire" it may in the future become, but "these United States of America" in the original and constitutional sense of the words it can never be again.

H. E. BELIN. CHARLESTON, S. C.