The part the soldiers played, Federal and Confederate, in restoring the Union, is a short story. The clash between them settled without reserve the only question that was really in issue--secession; slavery, that had been the origin of sectional dissensions, was eliminated because it obstructed the success of the Union armies. By their gallantry in battle and conduct toward each other the men in blue and the men in gray restored between the North and the South the mutual respect that had been lost in the bitterness of sectional strife, and without which there could be no fraternal Union. Mr. Gladstone, when the war was on, said that the North was endeavoring to "propagate free institutions at the point of the sword." The North was not seeking to propagate in the South any new institution whatever. Mr. Gladstone's paradox loses its point because both sections were fighting for the preservation of the same system of government. The time has now happily come when, to use the language of Senator Hoar, as Americans, we can, North and South, discuss the causes that brought about our terrible war "in a friendly and quiet spirit, without recrimination and without heat, each understanding the other, each striving to help the other, as men who are bearing a common burden and looking forward with a common hope." The country, it is believed, has already reached the conclusions that the South was absolutely honest in maintaining the right of secession and absolutely unswerving in its devotion to its ideas of the Constitution, and that the North was equally honest and patriotic in its fidelity to the Union. We need to advance one step further. Somebody was to blame for starting a quarrel between brethren who were dwelling together in amity. If Americans can agree in fixing that blame, the knowledge thus acquired should help them to avoid such troubles hereafter. It seems to be a fair conclusion that the _initial cause of all our troubles was the formation by Garrison of those Abolition societies_ which the Boston people in their resolutions of August 1, 1835, "disapproved of" and described as "associations instituted in the non-slave-holding States, with the intent to act, within the slave-holding States, on the subject of slavery in those States, without their consent." And further, that it was the creation of these societies, the methods they resorted to, and their explicit defiance of the Constitution that roused the fears and passions of the South and caused that section to take up the quarrel that, afterward became sectional; and that, after much hot dispute and many regrettable incidents, North and South, resulted in secession and war.