But while unity is thus exemplified in the history of our Government, the phenomenon of differentiation is also manifest. The functions of government have greatly multiplied since its first organization; the 'division of labor' process has been going on, and new departments and bureaus have been established. While I write, the expediency of another department, that of agriculture, is being agitated in Congress. The Department of the Interior has been quite recently created, and new bureaus in this department, and in others, are being created from time to time, by act of Congress, to meet new wants in the administration of our Government. And what is true in this respect of the General Government is, also, true of the State Governments; for there, too, do we find the development of new functions, and the creation of new official organs to execute the same.
This growth of the country at large, from which these new demands on the Government arise, is to be seen very distinctly in the industrial and educational elements of society. While these interests increase in magnitude and variety, and the people are becoming more concerned therein, the Government assumes a responsibility in regard thereto, which can only be discharged by the multiplication of the administrative appliances. These new governmental activities arise from the popular will, as moulded and expressed through the more intelligent and enterprising of its actors. They choose to have it so. It is found convenient, in the promotion of certain general interests, to appeal to a power which is presumed to embody the elements of order and authority in the execution of its will. In the construction of railroads and telegraphs, capitalists must coöperate with the Government in relation to questions of right, which, in many cases, can only be settled by a regularly constituted tribunal. State agricultural societies appeal to State Governments for coöperation, and when received, the industrial interests of the country are advanced thereby. We all know what State Governments have done for the cause of education. Sections of country which would at this hour have been in a state of almost semi-barbarism have—thanks to our educational policy—been redeemed from their prejudices against intelligence and education, and been made to step into line with the advancing columns of civilization. The same civilizing influences, precisely, have been brought to bear, by the active part which Government has taken in the improvement of all the means of travel, trade, and the transmission of intelligence. The intelligent and active few have thus advanced the interests of the many. In districts of country which have been without the channels of commerce except in a very rude condition, and where the enterprise of the people was inadequate to their improvement, the Government has reached out its strong arm and redeemed them from their primitive rudeness, thereby promoting the physical condition, the enlightenment, and the culture of the people. There are plenty of instances on record, in which improvements of this kind—of roads, for example—have been made against the will and in spite of the opposition of the people most to be benefited thereby; and had they not been related under the same government to communities more intelligent and enterprising than themselves, they would have remained in an isolated and semi-barbarous condition.
Now, while we readily discern the increase in the objects and in the machinery of government, we cannot so readily discern the abatement of governmental interference with the private affairs of the individual, as in governments of longer standing. There has not been time for great changes in this respect; and then, in the earliest legislation of our country there was comparatively so little that was obnoxious to individual freedom, that there has been less occasion for the change in question. The Blue Laws of Connecticut are proverbial for their intermeddling with private life. There has been no change in this respect so marked since the organization of our Government as there was before; but so far as there has been any, it is in favor of the exemption of the individual, in ordinary times, from legal interference. The entire atmosphere of American society is becoming more liberal as general education advances; and this, in turn, acts upon the legislative and executive functions of the Government, to make the laws and the execution of the same more acceptable to a cultured people. The 'Maine Law,' earnest and benevolent as it was in purpose, and to all seeming so obviously founded in the right of society to protect itself, could not be sustained against this tendency in government to let the individual alone in the affairs of his private life.
We have observed that there is a concentration of different industrial and commercial functions in different sections of the country, whereby these sections become dependent upon each other, and the unity of the whole, to a certain extent, made inevitable. Now, we insist that political economy and the greatest well-being of all require that the political jurisdiction should, as far as possible, be commensurate with that commercial, industrial, and social dependence which works itself out to a large degree of fulfilment in spite of the obstructions interposed by the contractedness and isolation of political organization.
As we have seen, this dependence of one industrial section upon another, and of one commercial centre upon another, as the result of commercial and industrial specialization, is becoming more and more marked as a development of human progress. All this increases the need for more extensive political organization, while at the same time it makes it possible.
It will readily be perceived that since industrial and commercial development is necessitating dependence and unity, it is equally true that the natural varieties of soil and climate are, also, conditions of like dependence and unity. When these diversities of soil in different sections are fully developed, and the exchange of products readily made through improved commercial facilities, and human wants multiplied by means of civilized culture, agricultural specialization creates the demand, not for political division and isolation, but for more extensive organization. That New England manufactures is no reason that she should separate her government from that of the other States, but just the reverse. That the Middle States are more distinctively a mining region, and the great West agricultural, is no reason that their general government should be distinct, but precisely the reverse. That the South produces cotton, rice, and sugar, is no reason for her seceding from the Union, but exactly the reverse. These diversified interests, we repeat, create interrelation and dependence, unitizing the commercial and industrial polity; and the political organization should, as far as possible, be coextensive therewith. There are physical necessities which prevent the formation and maintenance of a comprehensive political organization in the earlier stages of civilization, but these never have obtained in the United States, and every hour's improvement carries us farther beyond them.
All the results of a progressive civilization are constantly complicating the dependence and interrelation of various sections of our country. Roads, railroads, canals, and lines of telegraph, by their connections and intersections, are so many bonds of union between the various districts of our country—so many bonds of union between the various States of the confederacy—and forbid its dissolution. Even Nature conspires with civilization to the same end. The great valleys and rivers running north and south are so many natural ties, which the most incorrigible perverseness, on the part of man, could alone prevent from performing the office to which they seem so happily adapted in the play of the civilized elements.
As we have seen in our brief view of Europe, greater political unitization has been the result of growth in civilization. In the United States, all natural, commercial, and industrial bonds of union are becoming more fully developed. This evinces the direction of progress.
What, in the light of this view, are we to think of the doctrine of 'secession'?—of secession, that political dogma of recent development, which, if made practical, would destroy all political unity of greater compass than a State—a State, the idol of Southern political worship. It would break any confederacy into fragments, and prevent the consummation of those great unities which an advancing civilization demands. This doctrine of 'secession' would remand us back to the condition of affairs in Europe during the twelfth century, before commerce, the Crusades, and the waking up of intelligence had commenced the movement of national organization. The Southern States have a barbarian institution in their midst, but, not satisfied with that, they would inaugurate the practical operation of a new political doctrine, which must introduce still another element of barbarism, and interpose an additional obstacle to the progress of civilization. Shall this be? It is opposed to the political tendency of the times; and the common sense of mankind should forbid the acceptance of a political solecism in the organization of government, which virtually annuls the unity and integrity of the government itself.
There are crises, however, in human development, when the movement is rapidly set forward; and others, when it may be as suddenly arrested or thrown back, requiring long periods to regain the lost ground, preparatory to a new advance. Our Union, only a brief while since, appeared to be upon the point of irreparable rupture; the division of this great Union into minor geographical districts, like the European monarchies, seemed to be imminent. The determination of the South to secede; a large portion of the influential press at the North pleading their cause; Buchanan favoring secession; many in the North, then, and for a long time previous, in favor of a 'peaceable separation;' but—thanks to the blind impetuosity of 'Southern chivalry'—with the fall of Sumter, and the inauguration of the war, the only hope for this Union revived! Wicked or foolish people have said that the bombardment of Sumter was the death-knell of the Union;—we believe it was just the reverse;—as the turning point of a great crisis, it signalled the birth of a new era. It threw the trimming and temporizing politicians of the North off their old tracks, and tore their platforms from under them; their antipathies were suddenly neutralized; their prejudices vanished; they were unexpectedly floating anew on the sea of public sentiment; the opinions of influential men were subject to a new ordeal; and the views of many an entire clique, faction, and party were revolutionized in a day. Northern pride was wounded; Anglo-Saxon energy was aroused; there was a demand for determination and 'pluck,' and the result is known to all. Secession, in the Free States, was suddenly transformed; there was a grand uprising for the vindication of a great principle of political development; and nearly a million of armed men of all parties are now in the field; and God grant that they may be able to overcome the abettors of a barbarian policy!