The world--the whole trend of modern thought--was set against slavery.

But politics, based on party feeling, is a game of blindman's buff.

And then--here I show myself a son of Scotland--there is a destiny.

"What is to be," says the predestinarian Mother Goose, "will be, though it never come to pass." That was surely the logic of the irrepressible conflict--only it did come to pass--and for four years millions of people, the most homogeneous, practical and intelligent, fought to a finish a fight over a quiddity; both devoted to liberty, order and law, neither seeking any real change in the character of its organic contract.
Human nature remains ever the same.

These days are very like those days.
We have had fifty years of a restored Union.