The danger is not to be concealed, that the sympathy arising from known causes, and the inculcated impression of a permanent incompatibility of interests between the South and the North may put it in the power of popular leaders, aspiring to the highest stations, to unite the South, on some critical occasion, in a course that will end by creating a new theatre of great, though inferior, interest. In pursuing this course the first and most obvious step is nullification, the next secession, and the last a farewell separation. This was a pretty good forecast of the crisis that was precipitated by the greedy and reckless ambition of the secessionist leaders in 1860. The moral difference between Benedict Arnold on the one hand, and Aaron Burr or Jefferson Davis on the other, is precisely the difference that obtains between a politician who sells his vote for money and one who supports a bad measure in consideration of being given some high political position. The Abolitionists immediately contrived to bring themselves before the notice of Congress in two ways; by the presentation of petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and by sending out to the Southern States a shoal of abolition pamphlets, newspapers, and rather ridiculous illustrated cuts. What the precise point of the last proceeding was no one can tell; the circulation of such writings as theirs in the South could not possibly serve any good purpose. But they had a right to send what they wished, and the conduct of many of the Southerners in trying to get a federal law passed to prohibit their writings from being carried in the mail was as wrong as it was foolish; while the brutal clamor raised in the South against the whole North as well as against the Abolitionists, and the conduct of certain Southern legislatures in practically setting prices on the heads of the leaders in the objectionable movement, in turn angered the North and gave the Abolitionists ten-fold greater strength than they would otherwise have had.