Thus, opinion was broken into fragments; and nowhere outside of South Carolina did it acquire sufficient unanimity and power to impart any great momentum to the revolutionary design. Besides, in the absence of clear and deep convictions, the question itself was of such a nature, that strong passions could not easily spring from it. The interests involved were not necessarily in conflict; their opposition was more apparent than real, so that an adjustment could readily be made without sacrifice of principle. In short, the subject of dispute did not contain within itself the elements of civil war, capable of development to that extreme, at the time and under the circumstances when the futile attempt at separation was made. Doubtless, the sinister exertions of restless and ambitious men, acting upon ignorant prejudices, might, under some circumstances, have engendered opinions, even upon the tariff question, sufficiently strong and violent for the production of civil commotion. Had the conditions been more favorable to the plot; had the conspirators of that day been as well prepared as those of 1861; had they been equally successful in sowing dissatisfaction and hatred in the minds of the Southern people; had they found in Gen. Jackson the weak and pliant instrument of treason which James Buchanan afterward became in the hands of Davis and his coadjutors, the present rebellion might have been anticipated, and the germ of secession wholly extirpated and destroyed, in the contest which would then have ensued. The Union would doubtless have been maintained, and, in the end, strengthened; the fatal element of discord would scarcely have survived to work and plot in secret for more than a quarter of a century. It is true, slavery would have remained; but in the absence of other causes, slavery would not necessarily have brought the country to the present crisis. Providence may have so ordered the events of that day as to leave the revolutionary element in existence, in order that it might eventually fasten upon slavery as the instrument of its treason, and thus bring this system, condemned alike by the lessons of experience and by the moral sense of mankind, to that complete eventual destruction, which seems to be inevitably approaching.