While the
Federal Government has successfully performed its appropriate functions
in relation to foreign affairs and concerns evidently national, that of
every State has remarkably improved in protecting and developing local
interests and individual welfare; and if the vibrations of authority
have occasionally tended too much toward one or the other, it is
unquestionably certain that the ultimate operation of the entire system
has been to strengthen all the existing institutions and to elevate our
whole country in prosperity and renown.
The last, perhaps the greatest, of the prominent sources of discord and
disaster supposed to lurk in our political condition was the institution
of domestic slavery. Our forefathers were deeply impressed with the
delicacy of this subject, and they treated it with a forbearance so
evidently wise that in spite of every sinister foreboding it never until
the present period disturbed the tranquillity of our common country.
Such a result is sufficient evidence of the justice and the patriotism
of their course; it is evidence not to be mistaken that an adherence to
it can prevent all embarrassment from this as well as from every other
anticipated cause of difficulty or danger.
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