and no one can be bold enough yet to say that the day of permanent triumph has dawned.  Humiliation has alternated with success so far; and the most stunning defeats of the war in the West marked the beginning and the close of the hundred days named for honor.  This fact should teach modesty and caution.  For while justice to men requires us to admit that the greatest abilities do not always command success, devotion to principle forbids that a noble cause should be obscured to become the mere background of a scene in which an actor and popular idol is the chief figure.  It is with a consciousness of such partialities as are common to men, but with an honest purpose, so far as the writer is able, to subordinate men to principles, that this review of the origin and chief incidents of the rebellion in Missouri is begun.

The close connection of the State of Missouri with the slavery agitation that has now ripened into a rebellion against the government of the United States, is a singular historical fact.  The admission of the State into the Union was the occasion of vitalizing the question of slavery extension and fixing it as a permanent element in the politics of the country.  It has continued to be the theatre on which the most important conflicts growing out of slavery extension have been decided.  It will be the first, in the hope and belief of millions, to throw off the fetters of an obsolete institution, so long cramping its social and political advancement, and to set an example to its sister slave-holding States of the superior strength, beauty, and glory of Freedom.

The pro-slavery doctrines of John C. Calhoun, after having pervaded the democracy of all the other slave-holding States, and obtained complete possession of the national executive, legislative and judicial departments, finally, in 1844, appeared also in the State of Missouri.  But it was in so minute and subtle a form as not to seem a sensible heresy.  Thomas H. Benton, the illustrious senator of the Jackson era, was then, as he had been for twenty-four years, the political autocrat of Missouri.  He had long been convinced of the latent treason of the Calhoun school of politicians.  He was able to combat the schemes of the Southern oligarchy composing and controlling the Cabinet of President Polk; unsuccessfully, it is true, yet with but slight diminution of his popularity at home.  Nevertheless, the seeds of disunion had been borne to his State; they had taken root; and, like all evil in life, they proved self-perpetuating and ineradicable.  In 1849 the Mexican war, begun in the interest of the disunionists, had been closed.  A vast accession of territory had accrued to the Union.  It was the plan and purpose of the disunion party to appropriate and occupy this territory; to organize it in their interests; and, finally, to admit it into the Union as States, to add to their political power, and prepare for that struggle between the principle of freedom and the principle of slavery in the government, which