and as outfacing the most inveterate of all despotisms, should far out-rival the fabled procession of Dionysus,—­here was she not merely hindered by the vis inertias of her southern neighbor, but was actually stopped in her movement by a newly revealed force of opposition, was flanked by an ancient ally, now turned traitor, in the summertime of a most auspicious peace; and in her efforts to disembarrass herself of this enemy in the rear, were her energies totally exhausted.

A position precisely similar, in its main features, does Republican America hold to-day.  She has established her own freedom against all European intrusion; and in her efforts to do this she arrived at political union as an indispensable necessity, and merged all separate interests in a common one.  That interest, already vindicated for herself, has become world-wide in its meaning; so that, in virtue of what she has accomplished in the cause of freedom, she takes an authoritative position of leadership in modern civilization.  And what is it that hinders the fulfilment of her exalted mission?  She, too, has been flanked in her march by a traitor within her own borders; against her, and doing violence to her high office, are opposed the backward-tending elements of barbarism, which, if not immediately neutralized, if not summarily crushed, will drag her to the lowest stages of weakness and exhaustion.

A very minute parallel might be, drawn between the opposing civilizations that are to-day in this country contending for the mastery and those which were engaged in a similar conflict in the days of Pericles.  New England would be found to be the Attica of America; while, on the other hand, the Southrons would most exactly correspond to the ancient Lacedaemonians.  As the Cavaliers who first settled Virginia helped on the Puritan exodus, so did the Dorians that settled Sparta, through the tumult of their overwhelming invasion, drive the Ionians from their old homes to the barren wastes of Attica,—­barren as compared with the fertile valleys of the Eurotas, just as New England would be considered sterile when contrasted with Virginia or the Valley of the Mississippi.  Like the Ionian Greeks, the “Yankees” stand before the world as the recognized advocates and supporters of a pure democracy.  The descendants of the Cavaliers, on the contrary, join hands, as did the ancient Dorians, in favor of an oligarchy, and of an oligarchy, too, based on the institution of slavery.  Upon this difference rested the political dissensions of Greece, as do now those of our own country.  The negro plays no more important part in the difference between the North and South than did the Helot in the contests between the Spartans and the Athenians.  It is not in either case the simple fact of human slavery which necessitates the civil strife, but it is the radical opposition between a government that is founded upon slavery and one which is not.  The Athenians had slaves; and so, for that matter,