The Constitution itself was the work of a rich and powerful group of leaders in each State, and its provisions were a compromise of conflicting sectional property interests. The world had moved from 1789 to 1861. The North was unconsciously lifting the banner of a mighty revolution. The South was clinging with the desperation of despair to the faith of its fathers. The North was the world of steam and electricity, of new ideas, of progress. The South still believed in the divine inspiration of the men who founded the Republic. They must believe in it, for their racial life depended on it. Four million negroes could not be loosed among five million Southern white people and two such races live side by side under the principles of a pure democracy. Had this issue been put to them in the beginning not one Southern State would have entered the Union. The Northern workingman, with steam and electricity bringing North and South into closer and closer touch, answered this cry of fear from the South with the ultimatum of democracy: "This Nation can not endure half slave and half free!" Back of all the mouthings of demagogues and the billingsgate of sectionalists lay this elemental fact--a democracy against a republic. Nor could the sword of the Sections settle such an issue. The sectional sword could only settle an issue which grew out of it--whether a group of States holding a common interest in this conflict of principles could combine for their own peace and safety, leave the old Union, form a new one and settle it in their own way. The North said no--the South said yes. This conviction bigger than party platforms was the brooding terror which brought the sense of tragedy to young and old, the learned and the unlearned--that made young men see visions and maids dream of mighty deeds. * * * * * The Southern boy's eyes had again rested on the vacant chairs of the Senators from South Carolina with a set look in their depths. The crowd turned with sudden stir to the door of the Senate Chamber. "Look," Jennie cried, "that's Mrs. Clem Clay of Alabama--how pale and beautiful she is! The Senator's going to make the speech of his life to-day. She's scared--Ah, that dress, that dress--isn't it a dream? Did you ever see such a piece of velvet--and--do look at that dear little gold hand holding the skirt up just high enough to see the exquisite lace on her petticoat--" "Where's the golden hand--I don't see it?" Dick broke in skeptically. "Don't you see the chain hanging from her waist?" "Yes, I see that." "Follow it with your eye and you'll see the hand. The Bayard sisters introduced them from Paris, you know."