The causes of that divergence, with the exception of one, it is not necessary to discuss here. This one has survived even the cauterization of war. Other causes have passed away. The right of secession is no longer an active issue. It has been adjudicated. That it once existed and was utilized on occasion by other States than those which actually exercised it is undeniable; that it passed away with the Confederate armies at Appomattox is equally beyond controversy. The very men who once asserted it and shed their blood to establish it, would now, while still standing by the rightness of their former position, admit that in the light of altered conditions the Union is no longer dissoluble. They are ready if need be to maintain the fact. It is, however, important to make it clear that the right did exist, because on this depends largely the South’s place in history. Without this we were mere insurgents and rebels; with it, we were a great people in revolution for our rights. In 1861 the South stood aligned against the Union and apparently for the perpetuation of slavery. The sentiment of the whole world was against it. We were defeated, overwhelmed. Unless we possess strength sufficient to maintain ourselves even in the face of this, the verdict of posterity will be against us. It is not unlikely that in fifty years the defence of slavery will be deemed the world over to have been as barbarous as we now deem the slave-trade to have been. There is but one way to prevent the impending disaster: by establishing the real fact, that, whatever may have been the immediate and apparent occasion, the true and ultimate cause of the action of the South was her firm and unwavering adherence to the principle of self-government and her jealous devotion to her inalienable rights. But if the other causes which kept the country divided have passed away as practical issues, one still survives and is, under a changed form, as vital to-day and as pregnant with evil as it was in 1861. This is the question which ever confronts the South; the question which after twenty-five years of peace and prosperity still keeps the South “one section” and the rest of the nation the other. This is the ever-present, ever-menacing, ever-growing Negro Question. It is to-day the most portentous as it is the most dangerous problem which confronts the American people. The question is so misunderstood that even the terminology for it in the two sections varies irreconcilably. The North terms it simply the question of the civil equality of all citizens before the law; the South denominates it the question of Negro domination. More accurately it should be termed the Race Question. Whatever its proper title may be, upon its correct solution depend the progress and the security, if not the very existence, of the American people. In order that it may be solved it is necessary, first, that its real gravity shall be understood, and its true difficulties apprehended.