Excerpt from The Constitutional and Political History of the United States, Vol. 4 I believe that in this volume I have made a not entirely unimportant contribution to the proof of the allegation made above, aproof which it is my firm conviction will yet be furnished by the investigation of the history of slavery - I deliberately say slaverv and not slavery ques tion - in such a shape as to put it forever beyond the possibility of dispute. In my opinion, the volume could become such a contribution, only provided I discussed this period with an exhaustiveness which, spite of my endeavors to treat only of that which is indispensable to the un derstanding of the subject in hand, may weary many readers. This minute and critical entering into details was all the more necessary, since this period has, in many respects - especiallv as regards the finality question and know-nothmg1s1n - partly because of its unrefreshing character and partly because of the tangled and intricate nature of its history - been, in a special degree neglected not only by investigators, but even by party writers. It was, therefore, even more imperative than in the previous volumes, soqfar as space at all permitted, to prove my po'sition fioiiittlie O1iginal souices, ve1batim.othe1wise. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com 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.