States, with the resulting conflict of material interest between
different regions of the country. There are differences of race and even
of language to be overcome, extremes of wealth and poverty to be dealt
with. As though to make sure that no factor in the problem of
civilisation should be omitted, the men of last century were at pains to
saddle their descendants with the burden of the negro--a race incapable
of assimilation and yet tenacious of life. In brief, a thousand
difficulties and temptations to dissension beset the giant Republic: in
so far as it overcomes them, and carries on its development by peaceful
methods, it presents a unique and invaluable object-lesson to the world.
The idea of unity, annealed in the furnace of the Civil War, has as yet
been stronger than all the forces of disintegration; and there is no
reason to doubt that it will continue to be so. When France falls out
with Germany, or Russia with Turkey, there is nothing save a purely
material counting of the cost to hinder them from flying at each other's
throats. The abstract humanitarianism of a few individuals is as a
feather on the torrent. Such sentiment as comes into play is all on the
side of bloodshed. It takes very little to make a Frenchman and a German
feel that they are in a state of war by nature, and that peace between
them is an artificial and necessarily unstable condition. But in
America, should two States or two groups of States fall out, there is a
strong, and we may hope unconquerable, sentiment of unity to be overcome
before the dissentients even reach the point of counting the material
cost of war. Men feel that they are in a state of peace by nature, and
that war between them, instead of being a hereditary and almost
consecrated habit, would be a monstrous and almost unthinkable crime.
The National Government, as established by the Constitution, is in fact
a permanent court of arbitration between the States; and the
common-sense of all may be trusted to "hold a fractious State in awe."
"Did not people say and think the same thing in 1859," it may be asked,