accomplished at any earlier period of human history.  The old Southern ideas respecting slavery had disappeared, and that institution had become an object of idolatry, so that any criticisms to which it was subjected kindled the same sort of flame that is excited in a pious community when objects of devotion are assailed and destroyed by the hands of unbelievers.  The astonishing material prosperity that accompanied the system of slave-labor had, no doubt, much to do with the regard that was bestowed upon the system itself.  That was the time when Cotton became King,—­at least, in the opinion of its worshippers.  The Democratic party of the North passed from that position of radicalism to which the name of Locofocoism was given, to the position of supporters of the extremest Southern doctrines, so that for some years it appeared to exist for no other purpose than to do garrison-duty in the Free States, the cost of its maintenance being supplied by the Federal revenues.  Abroad the same change began to be noted, the demand for cotton prevailing over the power of conscience.  Everything worked as well for evil as it could work, and as if Satan himself had condescended to accept the post of stage-manager for the disturbers of America’s peace.

To take advantage of the change that had been brought about was the purpose of the whole political population of the South.  But though that section was united in its determination to support the supremacy of slavery, it was far from being united in its opinions as to the best mode of accomplishing its object.  There were three parties in the South in the last days of the old Union.  The first, and the largest, of these parties answered very nearly to the Southern portion of the Democratic party, and contained whatever of sense and force belonged to the South.  It was made up of men who were firmly resolved upon one thing, namely, that they would ruin the Union, if they should forever lose the power to rule it; but they had the sagacity to see that the ends which they had in view could be more easily achieved in the Union than out of it.  They were not disunionists per se, but were quite ready to become disunionists, if the Union was to be governed otherwise than in the direct and immediate interest of slavery.  Slavery was the basis of their political system, and they knew that it could be better served by the American Union’s continued existence than by the construction of a Southern Confederacy, provided the former should do all that slaveholders might require it to do.

The second Southern party, and the smallest of them all, was composed of the minions of the Nullifiers, and of their immediate followers, men whose especial object it was to destroy the Union, and who hated the subservient portion of the Northern people far more bitterly than they hated Republicans, or even Abolitionists.  They would have preferred abolition and disunion to the triumph of slavery and the preservation of the