But this development of the Americanized Caucasian under the relation of white master and negro slave, though a commanding fact in determining the application of laws to localities, is nevertheless but little, if any thing, more than a story half told; for in addition to the greater physical proportions of the individual man, the institution has given us our loftiest shoots of intellectual power. It has given us a Washington, a Jefferson, a Madison, and, as its limits were national in the dawning period of our republic, an Adams, a Hamilton, a Franklin, and, in fact, almost every other intellect of which the nation is justly proud. It was this institution which gave lofty manhood to the American mind, and threw the glove of defiance at the feet of the great Herculian English power. It gave birth to a nation of freemen, and when cut down in its limits by Northern folly, fanaticism, and design, its remaining noblemen, with but one third of the republic in population, for half a century gave direction to it all. They were giants in debate, and by their superiority, in the clash of sections, stung the pride of the opinionated Yankee, who, brooding over his wounds, sought that redress in the physical clash of numbers which he could not obtain in the battle of mind. Then, when Northern numbers, swelled by immigration to overpowering proportions, he, in the true spirit of a low cunning, discovered that “The Union was no longer worth a _cus_ without the letting of a little blood;” and, as a consequence, hurried on—in his security of numbers—his vaunted “Irrepressible conflict of contending and induring forces.” There could be no retreat from a conflict “irrepressible” in its nature. The child begotten must be born, and when defiance responds to aggression, there must come the shock of arms. It did come, and with a force that now tells the world of the madness in which it was conceived. Armies have met and have fought. The storm of war has passed over the nation, and beneath its debris now lies the American man, overcome and subdued, not by individual superiority, but by the force of mighty numbers—the madmen of his own country, in alliance with a world of immigrants and imported mercenaries, arrayed in arms against him. It was a conflict of unequal numbers and resources. Still it was a mighty struggle, for it was that shock in which “comes the tug of war.” The American man, who fought his battles alone, went down, but he fell, as he ever falls, from the lakes to the gulf, “with his back to the ground and his feet to the foe.” With a population of but five millions, and but poorly provided, he disputed, for four long and bloody years, every inch of ground, against the twenty-five millions, who, with all the engines of modern warfare, and with all Europe at their command for soldiers, hurled their mighty armies against him. But he fell, and why should he not have fallen, when the herring is known to have smothered the whale?