When the North demanded tariff protection for their industries as against European competition, the Southern States insisted upon free trade, so as not to be compelled to buy costly products of the North. The New England States strove for concentration of power in the national government; the Southerners believed that the independence of the individual States must be maintained, and when the Southerners demanded protection for their labor, which was performed by imported negroes, the North answered with evasion of the laws, while, in direct opposition to these laws, it denied to the master the right to his escaped negroes. From any point of view, there existed, and exist to-day, interests almost irreconcilably opposed, which make it difficult for the most earnest student of American affairs to find a clew in such a tangled labyrinth. The difficulty in the present undertaking is to make good the fact that the so-called Confederates, who have been by almost all the German writers represented as "Rebels," stood firm upon a ground of right of law. If the central government at Washington was the sovereign power, then the (Southern) States were in the wrong, and their citizens were simply rebels. If, on the other hand, the individual States were separate and sovereign political bodies, then their secession, independent of consideration of expediency or selfishness, was a politically justifiable withdrawal from a previous limited alliance; and in this case it was the duty of citizens of the States to go with their States. As a proper consequence of these different views, the Federals considered as a traitor every citizen who opposed the central government, however his individual State may have determined; while the Confederates, after the declaration of war on the part of the Union, looked on the Federalists indeed as enemies, but considered as traitors only those citizens who, in opposition to the vote of their States, yet adhered to the Union. * * * * Instead of inquiring into emotion and sympathies, the question is an historical one as to the origin of the Union; that is, to seek in the founding of the United States in what relation,--at that time, the States stood to the central government, the mode of their covenant, and how the relation of the several States to the common union was developed. The colonies, therefore, united not because the citizens in general were oppressed by the British Government, but because one colony felt, whether rightly or not, that it was oppressed and insulted as an independent political body. In the first movement of independence was exhibited clearly the consciousness that the colonies felt themselves separate political bodies. Even at that time the assembly of delegates designated itself "as a congress of twelve independent political bodies," and in the Union each of the colonies issued its separate declaration. When the delegates of the thirteen colonies met in their