in any benighted region, this elementary proposition shall be henceforth denied or doubted, schools for adults are to be established, and the needful instruction given.  By regiments, battalions, and brigades, with all necessary apparatus, the teachers go forth to their work.  The proposition is a very simple one, easily expressed and easily understood; but it tells the whole story.  It is the substance of all men’s thoughts, and of all men’s speech.  Mr. Lincoln states it in his inaugural.  Mr. Douglas impresses it upon the Illinois legislature.  Mr. Seward announces it, briefly and with emphasis, to the governments of Europe.  Sentimental talk about “our country, however bounded,” is obsolete; and how the country is bounded is now the point to be settled, once and forever.  “This territory, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, belongs to the people of the United States, and they mean to hold and keep it.  We shall neither alter our school-books nor revise our maps.”  So say the American people, rising in their wrath.

The practical question with which Mr. Lincoln’s administration had to deal in the first place was, Whether a popular government is strong enough to suppress a military rebellion?  And that may be regarded as already settled.  But the grounds upon which that rebellion is justified involve the vital facts of national unity, and even of national existence.  As a people, we have always been extremely tolerant of theories, however absurd.  There is hardly a doctrine of constitutional law so clear and well settled, that it is not, from time to time, discussed and disputed among us.  But when it comes to reducing mischievous speculations to practice, the case is altered, and the practical genius of the people begins to manifest itself.  Thus, the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of ’98 and ’99 declared the Federal Constitution to be merely a compact between sovereign States, created for a special and limited purpose; and that each party to the compact was the exclusive and final judge for itself of the construction of the contract, with a right to determine for itself when it was violated, and the measure and mode of redress.  As a theory, this doctrine has been very extensively accepted.  Great parties have adopted it as their platform, and elections have been carried upon it.  Its value as a support to the dignity and self-importance of local politicians was readily apprehended by them; and it was in perfect harmony with the tone of bluster which pervaded our politics.  The thorough refutation which it always encountered, whenever it was seriously considered, never seemed to do its popularity any harm.  In truth, mere vaporing hurt nobody, and caused no great alarm.  But when the Hartford Convention was suspected of covering a little actual heat under the smoke of the customary resolutions and protests, a bucket of cold water was thrown over it.  When, in 1832, South Carolina developed a spark of real fire, the nation put its foot on it.  And now, when the torch of rebellion has been circulating among very inflammable materials, until a serious conflagration is threatened, the instinct of self-preservation has roused the energies of the whole people for its immediate, complete, and final extinction.