Thus over nearly half of the national domain and among a large minority of the citizens of the Republic, the dynasty of Cotton has worked a divergence from original principle.  Wherever the sway of King Cotton extends, the people have for the present lost sight of the most essential of our national attributes.  They are seeking to found a great and prosperous republic on the cultivation of a single staple product, and not on intelligence universally diffused:  consequently they have founded their house upon the sand.  Among them, cotton, and not knowledge, is power.  When thus reduced to its logical necessities,—­brought down, as it were, to the hard pan,—­the experience of two thousand years convincingly proves that their experiment as a democracy must fail.  It is, then, a question of vital importance to the whole people,—­How can this divergence be terminated?  Is there any result, any agency, which can destroy this dynasty, and restore us as a people to the firm foundations upon which our experiment was begun?  Can the present agitation effect this result?  If it could, the country might joyfully bid a long farewell to “the canker of peace,” and “hail the blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire”; but the sad answer, that it cannot, whether resulting in the successor Democrat or Republican, seems almost too evident for discussion.  The present conflict is good so far as it goes, but it touches only the surface of things.  It is well to drive the Cotton dynasty from the control of the national government; but the aims of the Republican party can reach no farther, even if it meet with complete success in that.  But even that much is doubtful.  The danger at this point is one ever recurring.  Those Northern politicians, who, in pursuit of their political objects and ambition, unreservedly bind up their destinies with those of the Cotton dynasty,—­the Issachars of the North, whose strong backs are bowed to receive any burden,—­the men who in the present conflict will see nought but the result of the maudlin sentimentality of fanatics and the empty cries of ambitious demagogues,—­are not mistaken in their calculations.  While Cotton is King, as it now is, nothing but time or its own insanity can permanently shake its hold on the national policy.  In moments of fierce convulsion, as at present, the North, like a restive steed, may contest its supremacy.  Let the South, however, bend, not break, before the storm, and history is indeed “a nurse’s tale,” if the final victory does not rest with the party of unity and discipline.  While the monopoly of cotton exists with the South, and it is cultivated exclusively by native African labor, the national government will as surely tend, in spite of all momentarily disturbing influences, towards a united South as the needle to the pole.  But even if the government were permanently wrested from its control, would the evil be remedied?  Surely not.  The disease which is sapping the foundations of our liberty is not eradicated because