The constitution was not the creator of this nation, as lawyers and lawyer-bred statesmen hold, but the union and the constitution are both its creatures. This nation is constantly evolving, and as it does it modifies and unmakes the constitution and system of government of the United States, and the same of each State, as best suits itself. Why do we not trace our history from the first colonial settlements down to the present, and learn that the nation develops in both substance and form, in territory, in aims and purposes, not under the leading hand of conventions, congress, president, State authority, of even the fully decisive conquest of seceding States by the armies of the rest, but by the guidance of powers in the unseen, which we generally think of as the laws of evolution? To illustrate: For some time after I had got home from Appomattox I was disheartened, as many others were, at the menace of centralization. A vision of Caleb Cushing's man on horseback--the coming American Cæsar--seared my eyeballs for a few years. But after the south had been actually reconstructed I was cheered to note that the evolutionary forces maintaining and developing local self-government were holding their own with those maintaining and developing union. To-day, you see the people of different localities all over the north--in many cities, in a few States--driven forward by a power which they do not understand, in a struggle which will never end till they have rescued their liberties from the party machine wielded everywhere by the public-service corporations. To resume what we were saying just before this short excursion. Of course when the drifting of the south toward secession became decided and strong, Pan-American nationalization set all of its forces in opposing array. As soon as the southern confederacy was a fact, the brothers' war began. I emphasize it specially here that this war was mortal rencounter between two different nations. The successive stages by which her nationalization impelled the south to secession are roughly these: 1. The concretion mentioned above probably passes into the beginning of nationalization when the south was aroused by the resistance of the free-labor States to the admission of Missouri as a slave State. With a most rude shock of surprise she was made to contemplate secession. Although there was much angry discussion and the crisis was grave, you ought to note that the root-and-branch abolitionist and fire-eater had not come. That crisis over, which ended the first stage, there was apparently profound peace between the free-labor communities and the slave-labor communities for some while.