Profitable private enterprises resulting from railroad investments in the states, at the commencement of the fifties, awakened a dozing Congress to the national importance of the subject, and in 1853, the Government commenced a road at an estimated cost that would have made the head of a Thomas Jefferson swim with constitutional objections--involving an expenditure of one hundred and thirty millions, with an additional five millions for engineering. It proved a success; the expenditure of _labor_ enriched the people, and the road helped save the United States as a nation. With canals, railroads, turnpikes, large crops, quick and cheap transportation, growing cities and increasing knowledge, wealth and happiness, to Ohio the sky was clear overhead, and every thing prosperous, West, East and North, until 1860. Something was transpiring South--Northern men were returning from the slave states with the belief the country was on the verge of a civil war--a gigantic insurrection. Some, to whom such opinions were rendered, believed, but most Northern men made light of the idea of the South seceding, as there appeared no justifiable cause for secession or rebellion. But there was that quarrel about the black spot on the face of the Goddess of Liberty, which had grown large and was giving pain and mortification to all her Northern friends. It was evident the disease was destroying the life as it had the beauty, unless something was done to remove or check its growth. Consultation after consultation had from time to time been made by the wise men of the nation, ending in disagreement in regard to the etiology, pathology and treatment. Still it was evident, to both North and South, that something must be done. And the South, claiming the patient, assured the country the affection and disaffection could be removed by the law of nature Samuel Hahnemann made--“_similia similibus curantur_,” and retired with the intention to capture Washington before the North could make resistance, and then proclaim the slave-power, the true and lawful friend of Liberty, and insist upon a hasty recognition of the Government of the United States, by the foreign ministers at the federal capital and the leading powers of Europe. But the Southern blood could not be restrained, and the premature overt acts defeated the scheme, saved Washington, and led to the recovery of universal freedom in the United States through a prolonged and bloody law.