The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-01-16
As 1t Was and AS 1t Is--The Changes in
the Government and the Causes.

As 1t Was and As 1t Is--The Changes in
the Government and the Causes.
From the N. Y. Herald.
''The people are ahead of the politicians"
This remark has been attributed to the philo-
sophical Lincoln in discussing the hearty re-
ception of his emancipation proclamation by
the loyal States and the army. In his first
regular message to Congress he had proposed
scheme whereby he thought the abolition Of
slavery might be- cOnsummated by the year
1900. A few months later, when urged by
some religious deputation to proclaim the
acoursed thing abolished, he had answered
that such an edict would be "the Pope's bull
against the comet" With the evidence be-
fore him, however, Of the tremendous march
of ideas under the pressure of the bayonet,
Lincoln was not the man to lag far behind,
though still he aimed to follow rather than to
lead the people. 1t was the enlightened
march of the public mind Of the mighty North
that carried him, the army, and the UAion
through the ordeal of the most gigantic and
persistent rebellion In human history.
Here we come to the material forces opera
ting to shape the public mind to the inevitable
DRIFT of human events. The wise mea origi-
nally appointed to frame a supreme consttu-
tion for the Union and the States did their
work well under the circumstances. They
lett the institution of African slavery to die
natural death, and from what they had seen
they had good reasons for the opinion that the
institution could not long survive the pressure
of free labor and the general opinion of man
kind at that day. But Whitney's invention
of the cotton gin 179S) spoiled all their
calculations. Before that the tedious process
OF separating the fibre from the seed made
cotton culture an almost proiIless experiment
even in South Carolina; but Whitney's gin
soon wrought its miraculous changes. 1t
made cotton at once highly profitable pro
duct; it made slave labor in the cultivation
OF cotton cash article. The annual supply
of American cotton to the English mills
rapidly increased. The demand increased
with the supply. Negro slaves rose in price
and continued TO rise as the Southern cotton
planters we're enriched. The Shareholders of
the Northern border slave States found the
raising OF slaves for the Southern market the
most profitable staple from their wOrn-out to-
bacco lands, until the slave trade with the
cotton States from Richmond alone footed up
twenty millions OF dollars year.
What next! The Southern slaveholding
cotton oligarchy rising to the control OF the
Government and firmly holding it for many
years Next We see this powerful oligarchy
undertaking to cut loose from the Union by
force OF arms and to set up an Independent
| cOnfederaoy on the basis OF African slavery
and cotton. In Jeilerson's time the coming
wealth and power OF this oligarohy We're not
distinctly toreseen. His ideas and dogmas OF
| popular rights and State sovereignty were
substantially those of the infdel philosophers
OF the first French revolution. The Jeherso-
man Republican party was founded'upon those
ideas, in which sympathy for repu blican
France against the British monarchy had a
powerful influence over the American people,
still full OF their War of independence. Thus,
under Jefferson, the Constitution as it was
under Washington was greatly changed. The
checks and balances We're diverted from the
| NhA aNytN a...sas uz.. L
ginning of that Southern State sovereignty
construction of the Constitution which, under
the Democratic party, served the purposes OF
the cotton oligarchy down to 1860.
The first direct conflict OF the North with
the South ON slavery was that of 1920, re-
sul'ing IN the Missouri Compromise. The
usxt (lS32-33) was on the side issue Of south