Chapter 2:
- The Federal principle ultimately fatal to the Union. -- other causes of disunion. -- the sectional animosity. -- the geographical line in the Union. -- how the differences between North and South produced two distinct communities instead of rival parties within one body politic. -- the theory of a political North and a political South. -- its early recognition in the Convention of 1787. -- declaration of Madison. -- Mr. Pinckney's remarks. -- how the same theory was involved in the Constitution. -- the “treaty” clause between North and South. -- the Union not the bond of diverse States, but the rough companionship of two peoples. -- Gen. Sullivan's complaint to Washington. -- the slavery question, an incident of the sectional animosity. -- not an independent controversy, or a moral dispute. -- political history of negro slavery in the South. -- how it become the subject of dispute. -- the Hartford Convention. -- the Missouri line, the preliminary trace of disunion. -- declaration of Thomas Jefferson. -- why the North defamed “the peculiar institution” of the South. -- great benefits of this institution, and its contributions to the world. -- “slavery,” not the proper term for the institutions of labour in the South. -- the slavery question significant only of a contest for political power. -- differences between the Northern and Southern populations. -- the anti-revolutionary period. -- traces of the modern “Yankee.” -- how slavery established a peculiar civilizations the South. -- its bad and good effects summed up. -- coarseness of Northern civilization. -- no landed gentry in the North. -- scanty appearance of the Southern country. -- the sentiments and manners of its people. -- “American exaggeration,” a peculiarity of the Northern mind. -- sobriety of the South. -- how these qualities were displayed in the Northern and Southern estimations of the Union. -- “State Rights” the foundation of the moral dignity of the Union. -- Calhoun's picture of the Union. -- a noble vision never realized
Although the American Union, as involving the Federal principle, contained in itself an element ultimately fatal to its form of government, it is not to be denied that by careful and attentive statesmanship a rupture might have been long postponed. We have already briefly seen that, at a most remarkable period in American history, it was proposed by the great political scholar of his times-John C. Calhoun — to modify the Federal principle of the Union and to introduce an ingenious check
