about during these sixty years as respects them, or because of them;
and, finally, to reach if possible conclusions as to the causes which
have affected what may not inaptly be termed a process of general
evolution. Having thus, so to speak, diagnosed the situation, the
changes the situation exacts are to be measured, and a forecast
ventured. An ambitious programme, I am well enough aware that the not
very considerable reputation I have established for myself hardly
warrants me in attempting it. This, I premise.

Let us, in the first place, recur in somewhat greater detail to the
various policies and ideals I have referred to as in vogue in the
year 1853.

First and foremost, overshadowing all else, was the political issue
raised by African slavery, then ominously assuming shape. The clouds
foreboding the coming tempest were gathering thick and heavy; and,
moreover, they were even then illumined by electric flashes, accompanied
by a mutter of distant thunder. Though we of the North certainly did not
appreciate its gravity, the situation was portentous in the extreme.

Involved in this problem of African slavery was the incidental issue of
Free Trade and Protection,--apparently only economical and industrial in
character, but in reality fundamentally crucial. And behind this lay
the constitutional question, involving as it did not only the
conflicting theories of a strict or liberal construction of the
fundamental law, but nationality also,--the right of a Sovereign State
to withdraw from the Union created in 1787, and developed through two
generations.

These may be termed concrete political issues, as opposed to basic