When South Carolina, a few years afterward, assumed the very ground that the ancient republican party had indicated as lawful and constitutional, and claimed the right and power to set aside, within her own limits, acts of Congress which she pronounced void, because they transcended the Federal authority, she called on the republican party throughout the Union in vain.

The dangerous heresy had been renounced forever.

Since that time there has been no serious project of a combination to resist the laws of the Union, much less of a conspiracy to subvert the Union itself.
What though the elements of political strife remain?
They are necessary for the life of free States.

What though there still are parties, and the din and turmoil of their contests are ceaselessly heard?
They are founded now on questions of mere administration, or on the more ephemeral questions of personal merit.

Such parties are dangerous only in the decline, not in the vigor of Republics.