Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/140

 Doubtless, in this crisis of its political existence the nation has displayed many noble qualities: patriotism, fortitude in adversity, respect for authority, and in some measure the difficult arts of subordination and discipline. The civil power has never been threatened or weakened by the resistance of a popular commander; differences of social station have not interfered with the organisation of the army; military rank has not disturbed the level surface of ordinary life, the officer and the soldier have been merged in the peaceful citizen. In the number of the leaders there have arisen men of high ability, and at least one who has built himself a name among names that will never die. Nevertheless the judgment which overtook the American Union was not undeserved. Convulsions such as this spring from causes of commensurate importance, and cannot be the work of a short time or of a few men. Americans themselves would acknowledge this, but their explanations contradict each other. Some would say that the fault was with slavery, others would accuse the tyranny of the North. On the solution of the question depends the place which is to be assigned to the American Civil War in the history of the world.

It is remarkable that the Constitution was little trusted or admired by the wisest and most illustrious of its founders, and that its severest and most desponding critics were those whom Americans revere as the fathers of their country. Washington explained, in a conversation which Jefferson has recorded, his fears for the permanence of the new form of government. He stated that at one period of the deliberations the Constitution promised to satisfy his ideas, but that the great principles for which he contended had been changed in the last days of the convention. He meant the law which required a majority of two-thirds in all those measures which affected differently the interests of the several States. This provision, which would have given protection to minorities, was repealed in consequence of a coalition between the Southern and Eastern States, for the benefit of the slave-owners in the South, and of