Southern ports, and on every side were heard the notes of preparation. The spirit of the people had been thoroughly aroused, and a great war thundered in the horizon. Already the Southern Congress had adjourned from Montgomery, to meet, the 20th of July, at Richmond, which was chosen as the capital of the Confederacy. To that place had already come Mr. Davis and the officers of his Cabinet, for the purpose of directing the affairs of the Government and army. So stood the antagonistic powers at the beginning of June, 1861. It was now evident to all men-slow indeed had they been to believe it-that one of the greatest conflicts of modern times was impending. Let us look briefly into the causes which produced the Rebellion and led to the Civil War.

The first and most general of these causes was the different construction put upon the National Constitution by the people of the North and the South. A difference had always existed as to how the instrument was to be understood. The question at issue had respect to the relation between the States and the General Government. One party held that under the Constitution the Union of the States is indissoluble; that the sovereignty of the Nation is lodged in the central Government; that the States are subordinate; that the acts of Congress, until they are repealed or pronounced unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, are binding on the States; that the highest allegiance of the citizen is due to the General Government, not to his State; and that all attempts at nullification and disunion are in their nature disloyal and treasonable. The other party held that the National Constitution is a compact between sovereign States; that these States constitute a confederacy, or what the Germans would call a Staatenbund; that for certain reasons the Union may be dissolved by the States; that the sovereignty of the nation is lodged in the individual States, and not in the central Government; that Congress can exercise no other than delegated powers; that a State feeling aggrieved may annul an act of Congress; that the highest allegiance of the citizen is due to his own State, and afterwards to the General Government; and that acts of nullification and disunion are justifiable, revolutionary, and honorable. The theory was, in brief, that the Constitution itself provided that the States, under the Constitution, might abrogate the Constitution as it related to themselves, and thereby dissolve the Union.

Here was an issue in its consequences the most fearful that ever disturbed a nation. It struck into the very vitals of the Government. It threatened to undo the whole civil structure of the United States. For a long time the parties who disputed about the meaning of the Constitution were scattered in various sections. In the earlier history of the country the doctrine of State sovereignty had, indeed, been most advocated in New England. With the rise of the tariff question the local position of the parties was reversed. Since the tariff-a Congressional measure-favored the Eastern States at the expense of the South, it came to pass, naturally, that the people of New England, and afterwards of the whole North, passed over to the advocacy of National sovereignty, while the people of the South became wedded to the doctrine of State rights. Thus as early as 1831 the right of a State to nullify an act of Congress was openly advocated in South Carolina, and by her greatest statesman in the Senate of the United States; and thus also it happened that the belief in State sovereignty became more and more prevalent in the South, less and less prevalent in the North. The general effect of this localization of the two theories was to engender sectional parties, and to bring them ultimately into conflict.

The second general cause of the Civil War was the different systems of labor in the North and in the South. In the former sections the laborers were freemen, citizens, voters; in the latter, bondmen, property, slaves. In the South the theory was that the capital of a country should own the labor; in the North, that both labor and capital are free. In the beginning all the colonies had been slave holding. In the Eastern and Middle States the system of slave labor had been gradually abolished, being unprofitable. In the five great States formed out of the Territory northwest of the river Ohio slavery was excluded by the original Jeffersonian compact, under which that territory was organized.