political concerns of the country which should protect it from interference, and give to it all the expansion and potency which it might see fit to claim. So long as that absolute domination could be maintained within the administration of the Government, slavery and slaveholders were content to remain nominally republican and democratic--actually despots and unlimited rulers. But a contingency threatened them in the future. The numerical growth of population at the North, the moral convictions of the North--both of these united, or some other unforeseen circumstance, might withdraw the operations of the General Government from their exclusive control. To provide for that possible contingency, the doctrine of paramount allegiance to the individual States, and secondary allegiance merely to the General Government--a perpetual indoctrination of incipient treason--was invented, and has been sedulously taught at the South from the very inception of the Government. Hardly a child in attendance upon his lessons in an 'old-field' schoolhouse throughout that region but has been imbued with this primary devotion to the interests of his State; certainly, not a young lawyer commencing to acquire his profession, and riding the circuit from county court-house to court-house, but has had the doctrine drummed into his ears, of allegiance to his State; and when the meaning and importance of that teaching was inquired for, he was impressively and confidentially informed that the occasion might arise of collision between the South and the General Government on the subject of slavery; and that then it would be of the last importance that every Southern man should be true to his section. Thus the way has been prepared through three generations of instruction, for the precise event which is now upon us, flaunting its pretensions as a new and accidental occurrence.