"I assert that a controversy between powerful communities, organized into governments, of a nature like that which now divides the North and South, can be settled only by convention or by war. I affirm this upon the universal principles of human nature, and the collective experience of all mankind." And again: "A condition of parties in which the federative government shall be carried on by a party having no affiliations in the Southern States is impossible to continue. Such a government would be out of all relation to those States. It would have neither the nerves of sensation which convey intelligence to the intellect of the body politic, nor the ligaments and muscles which hold its parts together and move them in harmony. It would be in substance the government of one people by another people. That system will not do with our race." This reasoning was founded upon the facts of human nature, the philosophy of government, and the teachings of experience. Its truth is more manifest now than when it was uttered. Who of the great Free-soil leaders would have had the hardihood to persist in their course if they could have foreseen the consequences so clearly? Greeley, terrified by the horrible spectacle of war, was driven to say: "Let the wayward sisters depart in peace." Seward's short vision predicted that it would be all over "in sixty days"! But in great crises the foresight of the wisest is but blindness. Were it always given men to see what they are to go through with, the greatest steps in moral advancement would never be taken. Tilden did not foresee, through the storms of war, any more than others, the freedom of the slave with the acquiescence of the master, and the consequent unification of the republic.