[From _The Southern Review_ (Baltimore, April, 1867)]
This history consists of seven great crises. The first of these
convulsed the Union, and threatened its dissolution before the new
Constitution was formed, or conceived. For how little soever its
history may be known, the North and the South, like Jacob and Esau,
struggled together, and that, too, with almost fatal desperation, in
the womb of the old Union. Slavery had nothing at all to do with that
struggle between the North and the South, the _dramatis personæ_ in
the tragedy of 1861. It was solely and simply a contest for power.
The second crisis was the formation and adoption of the new
Constitution. Much has been said about that event, as the most
wonderful revolution in the history of the world; because the
government of a great people was then radically changed by purely
peaceable means, and without shedding a drop of blood. But if that was
a bloodless revolution in itself, no one, who has maturely considered
it in all its bearings, can deny that it was, in the end, the occasion
of the most sanguinary strife in the annals of a fallen world.
The revolution of 1801, by which the radical notions and doctrines of
the infidel philosophers of the eighteenth century gained the
ascendency in this country, never more to abate in their onward march,
constituted the third great crisis in the political history of the
United States. In passing through this crisis, the Republic of 1787
became in practice the Democracy of the following generation; and,
finally, the rabid radicalism of 1861. It was then that the
democratic, or predominant, element in the Republic, began to swallow
up the others, and so became the most odious of all the forms of
absolute power or despotism. It was then that the reign of "King
Demos," the unchecked and the unlimited power of mere numbers, was
inaugurated, and his throne established on the ruins of American
freedom. But, while history will show this, it will also administer
the consoling reflection, that American freedom was doomed, from the
first, by the operation of other causes, and that the revolution of
1801 only precipitated its fall. If so, then the sooner its fall the
better for the world; as in that case its destruction would involve a
smaller portion of the human family in its ruins.
The desperate struggle of 1820-21, between the North and the South,
relative to the admission of Missouri into the Union; the equally
fierce contest respecting the Tariff in 1832-33; the Mexican War, and
the acquisition of vast territory, by the dismemberment of a foreign
empire, which led to the most violent and angry of all the quarrels
between the two sections; constitute the fourth, fifth and sixth
crises in the stormy history of the United Sections. The seventh and
last great crisis, grew out of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise
of 1820, the rise of the Republican party, as it is called; and
consisted in the secession of the Southern States, and the war of
coercion. Each of these seven crises had, of course, its prelude and
its sequel, without which it cannot be comprehended, or seen how it
followed the preceding, and how it led to the succeeding crises in the
chain of events. Now some of these crises are most imperfectly
understood by the public, and, in some respects, most perfectly
misunderstood, such as the first two for example; others, and
especially the fourth, or the great Compromise of 1820, are overlaid
with a mass of lying traditions such as the world has seldom seen;
traditions invented by politicians, and industriously propagated by
the press and the pulpit. If these traditions were cleared away, and
the facts which lie beneath them in the silent records of the country
brought to view, the revelation would be sufficient to teach both
sections of the Union the profoundest lessons of humiliation and
sorrow. If patiently and properly studied, the history of the United
States is, perhaps, fraught with as many valuable lessons for the
warning and instruction of mankind, as that of any other age or nation
since the fall of Rome, since the Flood, or since the fall of man.