the legislature, he must learn his utter impotence. No man could be a ruler, in any controlling sense, who showed the least hesitancy with regard to the usurpations of slavery.

The construction of State sovereignty must be so extended and stringent as utterly to exclude the interference of the General Government with State despotism. All this was easy; for the few who deemed themselves born to rule had very little difficulty in making and interpreting law for the multitude, accustomed, from generation to generation, to know their places.

Slavery must also rule the General Government. It must, therefore, dictate candidates, decide the elections, and control the administration. It will be almost incredible in history, but it is now known to the world, that, in all this, it succeeded. For three-quarters of a century, it seemed impossible to pass a law in Congress that had the least tendency towards emancipation, or the amelioration of the condition of the black race; or to avoid adopting a measure which was demanded, to increase the securities and extend the power of slavery. Equally hopeless was any attempt to bring forward a candidate for the presidency who was not known to favor the peculiar institution, or firmly pledged to guard its interests. Even the sacred right of petition must be frowned down and stamped under foot, lest the ears of slaveholders should be reached by a word in behalf of human freedom in the South, and the friends of the institution be insulted by some intimations of a popular sentiment, somewhere in the Union, against this "sum of all villanies." This was not mere pretence: it was sober, downright earnestness; studied, persistent purpose, rising up from the very foundations of Southern society, handed down from sire to son, and well judged to be an absolute necessity for the preservation of slavery.

When the rapid growth of the free States, and the extension of population into the North-west, over-balanced the South in the councils of the nation, there was only one

alternative, guaranties from the free States, or secession. Slavery must rule the nation, or destroy it.

Nor can we claim that these enormous burdens were lightened by the growth of mind, the refinement of manners, or the patronizing customs, of the South. Neither the conceded kindness of a portion of the Southern planters to their slaves, nor the power of Southern hospitality, nor the skill and courtesy of leading politicians, could ever mean liberty to the people, black or white, South or North; nor imply the right of free principles to a controlling influence in the government.

CIVILIZATION FETTERED.

The great foundations of civilization are laid in conscience, in an accurate sense of justice; but slavery obliterates the broadest distinctions between right and wrong, and reconciles men to robbery. It crushes the feeling of personal rights upon the part of the slave, and brings the slave-owner to consent to a life of dishonesty. It makes licentiousness, with its brood of vices, so convenient and irresponsible as to demoralize a whole people under shield of popular social license. And this must produce a low standard of civilization. It ought not to be surprising to find in a country so polluted a few living in splendor, but the many in squalid hovels; a few in brilliant costume, but the multitude in rags; a few having the appearance of educated softness and polished lassitude, while the great numbers, white or colored, show the low breeding and animalization of menials, scorned and contemned whether they do right or wrong, vulgar and filthy in word and appear

ance.

Civilization seeks to increase the productiveness of the soil and all the common blessings of life; but slavery demands a large area of land, runs over it slightly, impover ishes, and abandons it. It makes labor dishonorable, and, for its white population, substitutes hunting, fishing, idleness,

and general dissipation. There will hence be a few palatial residences with costly furniture and sumptuous tables, amid multitudes of huts with broken chairs, benches, beds of straw, and the coarsest food.

Civilization struggles to educate; but slavery, as we have seen, denies education to the slave and to the masses of the poor whites. Hence vast majorities of the people will not be able to read or write; will be shut out of the great world of letters, and consigned to a night of virtual barbarism. To avoid danger from liberalizing tendencies, school-books must be subjected to a narrow, censorship, and all sentiments of personal freedom for the millions thoroughly expurgated. Sons and daughters of the ruling class must be sent abroad to be educated; or teachers must be imported, and their instincts of humanity suppressed.

Civilization requires a pure, experimental Christianity and a true literature; but slavery allows neither.

THE PRESS AND THE PULPIT BOUND.

When the great crisis came, how long a time had elapsed since a man could safely publish a paper, or circulate tracts and volumes, which, with outspoken honesty and thoroughness, sympathized with the slave, and advocated his right to freedom! Nothing could be more inevitable in the slave States than the subjection of the press to the imperious dictation of the system. And just as inevitable was the submission of the party press in the free States, if the votes of this domineering interest were to be won for the success of candidates. No political party whose periodical press advocated emancipation, immediate or gradual, could hope for this vote, or had the remotest chance of success.

Nothing can be more vital to liberty than the independence of the pulpit; but no minister of Christ could preach in a land of slavery, freed from the shackles of popular opinion, nor at all, unless it was known that he would com

pel the great law of love to harmonize with bonds and coer cion.

This is not all. The national pulpit must either denounce or tolerate robbery: it must either bear full and decided testimony against "man-stealing" and its mildest as well as its most brutal sequences, or it must subordinate its teaching to the great dominant idea of unity, and smother conscience in sympathy for slaveholding misfortunes. And thus it was. When we thought and felt that every thing must bow to the one sentiment of confraternity, we preached carefully, or not at all, the great common rights of manhood and the fearful crimes of slavery.

All this, let it be observed, in a land of liberty, the land of the great Declaration. And, thus far, this power had been mightier than the power of foreign oppression. Against that we rose in the strength of our manhood, and hurled it to the ground; but to this we bowed, until its lordly dictations and insulting menaces became natural and tolerable, and until we had actually manufactured an entire department of law and logic and gospel and etiquette to accommodate and defend it.

Thus the slave-power grew and smiled, and preached and prayed, and raved and swore, until the cup of its iniquity was full; and this is where the moral struggle that immedi ately preceded the war of emancipation found us.

CHAPTER II.

THE GREAT MORAL CONFLICT.

"After-ages will moralize on the hallucination under which an exceptional and transitional state of things, marking the last phase in the existence of an old feudal monarchy, has been regarded and confidentially propagated as the normal and final state of man." GOLDWIN SMITH.

COULD this state of American subjection to a foreign idea last forever? Was it possible that the domination of the slave-power would be final in the Great Republic, and the purposes of freedom, to which this splendid country was so early consecrated, utterly overthrown? If the comparative skill, the daring and persistent purpose, of men could decide it, the answer would be clearly, Yes. If the wrong could hold its conquests by power, by bold and unscrupulous talent trained in the art of politics for many long years; if astute scheming upon the part of the few could control the many, there could be no question: we were destined to be a great nation of usurpers and despots; to live and rankle in corruption, and die under the visitations of God, remembered but to be despised and execrated wherever history should record our name. But if truth and right were imperishable, if true religion was in the conflict, if God would decide the question, then the answer was, No.

But we must not forget that the plans of God develop slowly; that they include a vast sweep of redeeming agencies, dealing with wrongs deeply rooted, and coming down from long-distant ages. Venerable in antiquity and hoary in crime, slavery had only yielded in one country, to reveal its strength in another; and here, in this land of liberty, it