Excerpt from The Great Parliamentary Battle and Farewell Addresses of the Southern Senators on the Eve of the Civil War<br><br>The period anterior to the Revolution produced a number of men who stand preeminent in American history for their intellectual powers and as the de fenders of the Constitution. No greater names adorn the pages of American history than those of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock and Samuel Adams. These men sat in the convention that framed the Constitution of the United States. They were the great figures of the epoch at the birth of the American Republic.<br><br>The War of 1812 produced a group of men whose fame is dear to every American patriot.<br><br>The founders of the Government did not seem to foresee the sectional issues destined to overturn the policies they formulated, and that slavery would bring about an agitation that would shake the fabric of our Republic.<br><br>It was as late as 1820 that the changed condition became recognized and that the slavery issue had hoisted a danger signal that pointed to war. Thomas Jefferson speaks of it as falling like a fire bell in the night. He wrote to his friend, Mr. Holmes: I considered this agitation at once as the death knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment, but this is a reprieve only, not a final sen tence; the geographical line coinciding with the marked principle moral and political.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.