relatively the wealthiest of the British American Colonies. The commerce of Charleston had been more important than that of Boston, Philadelphia, or New York. But notwithstanding the development of the cotton culture in which she found herself doubly interested, as a producer and as a factor, South Carolina had been gradually losing under the Union the prosperity which she had enjoyed under the crown. It might be easy to show that this fact ought to have been traced, in the main, to causes quite independent of the Union. But political economy is a science of modern origin, which has not yet made itself respected even in the most enlightened countries of the old world, and the people of South Carolina in 1828-9 were easily convinced that they had sacrificed to the Union much more than they had gained from it. This conviction operated upon their minds precisely as Henry Clay did not hesitate in his plea against nullification to assert that such a conviction would operate upon the minds of the New England and Middle States: "Let these States feel that they are the victims of a mistaken policy; let those vast portions of our country despair of any favorable change, and then, indeed, we might tremble for the continuance of the Union." *

The people of South Carolina believed themselves to be the victims of a mistaken policy, and they acted as the people of any other considerable section of the country, laboring under a similar belief, might have acted. They protested against the execution of the obnoxious laws, and having protested in vain they proceeded to make a show of force in maintenance of their protest.

President Jackson met these demonstrations with such a display of the Federal power as the means at his disposal per

*Mr. Clayton, of Delaware, afterwards Secretary of State of the United States, was still more explicit. In 1833 that senator did not fear to say in his place in the Senate, "the government cannot be kept together if the principle of protection is to be discarded in our policy, and I would pause before I surrendered that principle EVEN TO SAVE THE UNION."-Benton's Thirty Years' View, vol. i., p. 321.

mitted, and applied to Congress for authority to reinforce those means. The authority which he asked was conferred upon him, but he was dispensed from the painful and perilous duty of employing it, by a timely congressional compromise, acceptable to South Carolina, and honorable to the govern

ment.

The party of disunion throughout the South was, at this time, too weak to afford any substantial support to the extreme views of South Carolina, but the most moderate Southern men, and those who looked with most disfavor upon the attitude of that State, admitted that had the sword been drawn by the President it would have been impossible to avert a general war between the combined Southern States and the Federal government.*

The election of Mr. Van Buren to the Presidency in 1836, avowedly as "a Northern man with Southern principles," afforded a striking illustration of the prominence which strictly sectional issues were rapidly assuming in American politics.

These issues were now about to be formidably influenced by the direct interference of an organized body of Northern men with the most distinctive social institution of the South.

A single man, William Lloyd Garrison, a man of humble origin and of fortunes as humble, animated by a fanatical hatred of slavery, and profoundly disgusted by the indifference with which that institution was regarded by the great masses of the Northern people, devoted himself to the task of setting on fire the moral instincts of the Northern people, and became the Hermit Peter of a Northern crusade against the sum of human villianies.” †

* Speech of B. Watkins Leigh, of Virginia, in U. S. Senate, 1833.

The "Liberator" newspaper was founded by Garrison in Boston, in 1830. It was published in a mean form and at a small expense. When the government of Georgia placed a price on Garrison's head three years afterwards, Mr. Harrison Gray Otis, then mayor of Boston, truly in formed the governor of Georgia that the publisher of the Liberator was an obscure person in a garret, of whom he had never so much as heard.

This man was a stranger to all political parties and combinations. He denounced the Constitution as a covenant with death, and a compact with hell," because, as he had the capacity to perceive, and the candor to admit, it recognized the existence of slavery and guaranteed the rights of the slaveholder.

For this he was persecuted as a political blasphemer by the people of the North, reviled in the press, and assaulted by well-dressed mobs.

But this did not prevent the people of the South from regarding his course as an indication of Northern sentiment, or Southern fanatics from skillfully employing his most inflammatory harangues to encourage the growth of an intense sectional feeling of hostility to the North and to Northern men. The then recent emancipation of the British West India slaves* gave a great impulse to this anti-slavery movement at the North. The flame of a succussful enthusiasm in old England communicated itself to the kindling enthusiasm of New England. Men who had "drunk delight of battle" on the platforms of Great Britain, the Varangians of the guard of Wilberforce, eagerly passed the Atlantic in quest of a new field of conflict.

The question of slavery soon began to fasten itself upon the politics of the Republic. Petitions seeking the abolition of slavery in the Federal District of Columbia, were introduced into Congress by members from the North.

The reception of these petitions was opposed by members from the South, on the ground that they violated at once the rights of the States by which the District had been ceded to the nation, and the principles of reciprocal comity and forbearance on which the Union itself was founded. The opposition was at first successful. But the advocates of abolition

returned again and again to the charge.

* August 1, 1830.

+ Resolutions introduced into the House of Representatives by Mr. H.

On the 20th of December, 1837, just fifty years after the adoption of the Federal Constitution of the Union, motions were prepared by Mr. Rhett, of South Carolina, declaring it "to be expedient that the Union should be dissolved;" and calling for "a committee of two from each State to report upon the best means of peaceably dissolving it." These motions were intended to be presented as amendments to a motion made by Mr. Slade, of Vermont, to refer a certain petition to a committee with instructions "to report a bill abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia." They were not, however, presented, the original motion, after a hot and dangerous debate, being defeated by a two-thirds vote. But from this time onward the question was destined perpetually to recur in the halls of Congress. It had become complicated with the right of petition in the abstract, of which the venerable John Quincy Adams, a man hardly to be called an abolitionist, but vehement in point of character, and of a mind as narrow as it was vigorous, constituted himself the especial champion. The intemperance with which his position on this point was assailed by many of the Southern members, inflamed his passions, intensified his hereditary hatred of the South, and envenomed the sharpness of his rhetoric; and the debate upon this subject rapidly degenerated into gladiatorial conflicts, certain to exasperate the public sentiment in both sections of the Union.

While the moral relations of the people of the North and the South were in this angry and perilous state, influences most unfavorable to harmony and union were at work upon their political relations also. A great financial crisis in 1837 was followed by a contest, which rapidly assumed a strongly sectional aspect, upon questions of financial policy. The altered C. Pinckney, of South Carolina, were passed May 25, 1836, declaring that Congress ought not to interfere in any way with slavery in the District of Columbia," and ordering all papers in any way relating "to the abolition of slavery to be laid upon the table." These resolutions were adopted by a vote of 117 to 68.-Fowler's Sectional Controversy, p. 118.

circumstances of the country and of the world were about to invest this contest with a character entirely new. The prosperity of the Southern slaveholding States was about to receive a fresh and powerful impulse, the force and the results of which have only been fully revealed by the events of the existing war.

In 1845, the project of reannexing to the United States the magnificent Republic of Texas, formed out of territory originally included in the cession of Louisiana by France, but receded by the United States, in 1819, to Mexico, awakened a political tempest violent beyond all previous example. The cry of "Texas or Disunion" was raised in many parts of the South, while the legislatures and governors of some of the Northern States emphatically declared that the annexation of Texas would be a practical dissolution of the Union. All the passions before enlisted on the subject of slavery burst forth again upon Congress and the country with fresh fury. Propositions, looking to the abolition of the slave representation of the South, and even to the abolition of slavery itself within the Southern States, by congressional action, were introduced into Congress. These propositions were indorsed by State authority on the one side, and denounced by State authority on the other. Texas, however, was finally annexed to the American Union amid a tempest of moral indignation at the North, which became still more vehement upon the consequent declaration of war with Mexico. In many parts of the North, and particularly in New England, it was found to be practically impossible to raise volunteers for this war. The South and the West regarded the war with favor, and feelings of sectional jealousy and distrust developed themselves in the armies of the Republic actually in the field.

Under the administration of President Polk, the Southern views of financial policy won a substantial triumph in the passage of the tariff of 1846. In this tariff, the principle of revenue was substituted for that of protection, to the manifest