17 What moment of the past would you select now, upon deliberate afterthought, when, if things had turned out differently, you can imagine that the Southern tendency would have been checked ? When great natural elements are at their work of making history, things happen naturally, and could never happen differently ; they express with mathematical accuracy the state of the elements. To suppose a change in the circumstances you must previously suppose a change in the forces that arc at work, including the mental and spiritual condition of the people. Sometimes men speculate that if the events of a period had been different the results would have been different.”* There is but little virtue in that “ If,” for an event, by occurring, shows that it could not have been different. Events are always the products of all the forces at the period of their occurrence. While one force checks, and another force propels, still another must lie dormant, and others do little but appear upon the field. And masses of men are but the embodiments of the forces, which they help at every moment to create, and which illustrate their period. It is as absurd to wonder what would have happened if William the Conqueror had not invaded England, or Washington had not organized the spirit of ’76, or if Daniel Webster had made a different speech on the 7th of March, 1850, or if Fremont had been elected President six years ago, or if Buchanan had garrisoned the Southern forts, as to wonder what the movements of the solar system would have been if the planets had no moons, or if the sun were half its present bulk. The good and ill of history combine to repeat the wondrous tale of the divine necessities. England was invaded, Washington arose, Webster fell back before advancing slavery, Fremont lacked three hundred thousand votes, and Buchanan loaded the first gun and trained it on Fort Sumter, from combinations and foregoing influences and momentary moods that expressed themselves thus, in scorn of all ifs and buts, and leaving the future to explain them. Even the disgraceful things which men do at critical moments are nice expressions of an evil tendency, show how fur it is disposed to go at every point where a good tendency does not yet suflice, and are the unconscious menials * See, for instance, Niebuhr’s Lectures, ii. 59. 3
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