secondary authorities, all of whom are named as cited or quoted. Among these, first place belongs to Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln: A History, the most important contribution thus far made to an understanding of the Civil War. This monumental work I have treated practically as a document, because of the peculiar relation of the authors to President Lincoln, their association with the principal public men of war time, and their authoritative, and often exclusive, knowledge of the true course of affairs. Lincoln's works, either in the Century Company's edition in two volumes, or the Tandy edition in twelve, I have used as the primary source of our knowledge of the attitude of the national mind to the great conflict. The plan of the series of which this volume is a part excludes footnotes, and for that reason I have quoted where ordinarily I would have paraphrased and indicated the authority by a footnote. From beginning to end I have had but one thought: to bring home to the reader the best I could obtain for him, ever subordinating myself to him; and whenever an acknowledged authority has recorded affairs in a masterly way, I have not hesitated to give the reader the benefit of the master.

Free use, the reader will discover, has been made of the writings of American statesmen, jurists, and journalists, that the growth of ideas may, as it were, trace itself from generation to generation. Of special usefulness are the Census Reports for 1830, 1840, 1850, 1860, and 1870, which have been sedulously consulted; also The Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Richardson, i-vii; The Federalist; Johnston's edition of American Orations, and also his critical papers on American history in Lalor's Cyclopedia: no writer of his day placed his successors under greater obligations than did Alexander Johnston. Having treated the constitutional history of the period at length in my Constitutional History of the United States, I have drawn from that work the account of the creation and admission of West Virginia, and have utilized its material in the account of the abolition of slavery. The rather long editorial from the London Times

of December 7, 1889, could not well be cut down without doing an injustice to the reader, as the editorial is perhaps the best summary of the War from an English source, and is the more interesting because of the known attitude of the paper toward the Union in 1861-1864. The Civil War was a mighty national adjustment, fundamentally of an economic nature, and the present volume is written as a modest contribution to help to interpret it in that way.

FRANCIS N. THORPE.

Distinctive characteristics of North and South. The birth
of the national idea. The government of the Constitution.
Territorial limits of the United States in 1783. Cession
of western lands to the United States. Population in 1790.
The nation a slaveholding one. Gradual disappearance
of slavery in the North. The slave and free colored pop-
ulation in the South in 1860. Free colored population in
the North. Relation of climate and slavery at the North.
Early sentiment against extension beyond the Mississippi.
Slavery prohibited in the Northwest Territory, but per-
mitted in Southwest. The Missouri Compromise. Ac-
quisition of the Floridas. Westward migration. New
free States. Texas admitted. Upper California pur-
chased. Extent of territory at close of Mexican War. Set-
tlement of California. Why California adopted a free-
State Constitution. South lacks population to found new
slave States. Alarm of the South for slavery. The Com-
promise of 1850. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill. The con-
flict in Kansas. The Dred Scott decision declared slavery
national. Conditions that planted slavery in the South.
Effect of foreign immigration on sectional growth. The
North not generally hostile to slavery. Economic disad-
vantages of slavery at the South. Economic contrast of
North and South.

II THE GROWTH OF THE SLAVE POWER

3-39

41-155

Legislative control of slavery. Slave population 1790-1860.
Southern agriculture and slave breeding. The political

CHAPTER

aspect of slavery.

Congressional representation of free
and slave States 1790-1860. Mechanical inventions and
northern progress. More slave territory demanded. Polit-
ical dominion of the South. Claim of property right in
slaves. The nation responsible for the existence of slav-
ery. Slave area in 1857. Comparative value of slave and
free labor. Condition and treatment of the slave. Money
value of slaves. Slave breeding profitable. Slavery the
monopoly of the cotton planter. Condition of the poor
whites. Cotton growing the essential ground of slavery.
Intellectual expansion restricted in the slaveholding area.
The defense of slavery. The lesson of the patent grants
of 1846. Comparative railroad facilities in slave and free
States in 1850. Value of manufactures in 1839 in slave
and free States. Educational facilities and illiteracy in
slave and free States in the early forties. Newspapers
North and South. Attitude of the churches toward slavery
in 1840. The "three-fifths" clause a power for slavery.
The predominance of the slave power in public affairs till
1860. The Liberty party appears. Early anti-slavery dec-
larations and decrees. Slavery compromises in the Con-
stitution. The Anti-Slavery Society. Sectional antagonism
inaugurated. Congress forbids circulation of anti-slavery
literature in the South. The first fugitive-slave law. Per-
sonal liberty laws. Platform of the Liberty party in 1844.
Platforms of the Free Soil party in 1848 and 1852. First
platform of the Republican party. The Democratic party
platform of 1856. The popular vote of 1856. Slavery and
State sovereignty. Lincoln formulates an anti-slavery pro-
gramme. His debates with Douglas. His Cooper Insti-
tute speech in proof of the power of Federal control of
slavery. Vice-President Breckenridge's statement of the
slavery issue. Republican party platform of 1860. Other
party platforms of 1860. The vote of 1860. South Carolina
prepares to secede. Crittenden's Compromise. Buchanan
hesitates to strengthen the defenses in the South. South
Carolina passes an ordinance of secession. Other States
secede. South Carolina's "Declaration of Causes" and
"Address to the People of the Slaveholding States."

III CONFEDERACY OR NATION

PAGES

157-219

Confederacy and Nation non-distinctive terms down to
the Civil War. The nature of the government of the
United States. Powers and defects of articles of Fed-