From this time forward the two parties that had been struggling with each other for four years in such fierce antagonism were dead; and in their place have appeared the two political parties that are found throughout the United States; and the lines of difference between the men of the South and the men of the North have been as completely obliterated in thirty years, as they were obliterated in Old England, between Saxon and Norman, after 500 years of savage strife and turmoil.

And now, if the superior races of the world have been formed by the amalgamation of the kindred stocks, may we not believe that Providence has been preparing in this central State a people that shall bear a distinguished part in that mighty battle that is so swiftly coming to the American nation, in which we will be called to fight against a Christian barbarism and a paganized Christianity, for all that is precious in our Christian civilization, and for all that is true and good in our American form of government?

Rome fell under an invasion by foreign barbarians; so an inundation of the barbarians of the world is pouring in on us, and threatens to swallow us up; it is like the flood the dragon poured out of his mouth.  Of our duties growing out of this catastrophe we shall write hereafter.

The writer of these “Recollections” is a fallible man, like other fallible man.  He has shown at least this, that he is ready to stand by his convictions, living and dying; and he holds this conviction fixed and immutable, that there is a crisis coming on us of overtopping and overwhelming magnitude, and demanding the American people should come together and look each other honestly in the face, that they may take into their hearts this weight and extent of the reasons that call that they should join in united effort for the salvation of the nation and the conversion of the world; and that this does not allow that there shall be anything of flimsy, shallow, or hypocritical concealment of the facts of our history.

The world has had abundant experience of these border feuds.  Scotland had her feuds between her Highlands and Lowlands.  In Ireland there has been unceasing enmity for 250 years between her Protestant and Catholic populations.  The French and English peoples of Canada are never at peace with each other; and now there is a feud that can not be healed between England and Ireland.  In some of the mountain regions of the Southern States, where the people yet retain the clannish temper of their Scotch and Irish ancestors, there are neighborhood enmities that go down from father to son, from generation to generation; and that issue in such fist fights, brawls, and mobs, as sometimes to tax the whole energy of the public authorities to suppress them.  And now, with such foundation laid for the indefinite perpetuation of similar feuds in Kansas, we do argue that it has manifested on the part of our population no ordinary qualities of heart and soul, that they were so soon able to eliminate from among themselves their turbulent and dangerous elements.