12 claim which before was merely entertained. And now, therefore, the question to be decided is no longer slavery, but one of governmental structure. Slavery was thus merely the occasion, not the cause, of these mighty events that are thundering around us. The cause lies deep down in a difference of opinion between the North and the South as to the right of a certain kind of liberty of action; the latter asserting such right, the former denying it. The question is not now one of liberty—that has been decided; but of the extent of liberty. And slavery was the spark which ignited the explosion, not the powder itself which has now exploded. If slavery had long since been put to rest forever, this other greater question would still have remained undecided; and at some time something must have arisen of sufficient force to bring it to an issue and settle it, before we could have had peace as a normal internal condition of the country. For seventy years we have had prosperity, but it has been a fictitious prosperity, ready to disappear at the bursting of this mine, over which we have been resting all the while ! A prosperity not to launch ns forth successfully into a century of peace and its developments, but rather a prosperity to gird us up for the settlement, when the time should be ripe for it, of this great question. That what I have stated is the question, is, moreover, evident from the fact that thousands and thousands in the North, who continued after the election, and up to the twelfth of April, firm friends of the South, and united foes to the Administration on the subject of Slavery, on that twelfth were found a unit against the South, and at the side of the Administration to sustain it. Are men madmen, devoid of reason, thus to turn in a night ? —to turn without inter-consultation—to turn spontaneously—to turn unanimously—to turn definitively ! Is this a mere delusion—. a mere frenzy—a mere Fourth of July enthusiasm for a piece of bunting ? Northern blood is not apt to be frenzied ; and the great question with them is not now the policy of the Governme t. but it is the very existence of the Government itself, as a power created by the whole, and binding upon the whole, until the whole, in their primary capacity, agree to alter it. This is the view of
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