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sions employed, on the one side and the other, in their legis. lative manifestoes. The natural result was, that each weakened its own position, and lost its own adherents to the third party, instead of strengthening itself. The positive element got the better of the negative. There were those of both the Democratic and the Whig organizations who constantly remonstrated against this suicidal and unprincipled policy, from the beginning; but their more sagacious counsels were unheeded by the temporizing politicians, who either would not, or could not see the consequences to which it must lead. In this struggle to win the popular vote, therefore, sprang up and grew those factious appeals to mere sentiment and passion, in disregard of more sober addresses to reason and conviction, which ought to govern the deliberate conduct of a free people, in high matters of state, profoundly affecting their immediate and future welfare.

It was in this way that politics became gradually so degenerate among the masses of even intelligent persons at the North. In fact, it was a descent from the highest civil state of man to the lowest; because, in a republic, whenever the popular mind becomes debased, or even indifferent, no check remains to the natural tendency to corruption in political affairs. For in these personal responsibility seems so much divided, that in regard to them men do not always act upon those nice considerations which they would apply to their private relations. Without meaning to institute any disparaging comparison, it may be remarked with justice, that the middle class of men at the South, whether owing to larger leisure, or to whatever cause, have in general more closely attended to, and more clearly understood, the principles of our government than the same class at the North. In the former quarter, most persons would ride many miles, if necessary, to vote at every election; while in the latter, nothing has been more common, than for men of fortune and education to avoid the trouble of stepping into the voting place, though almost at their very doors. Thus, too often, the field of active operation has been thrown wide open to

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an inferior order of claimants for popular favor, and ordinary persons have gained the public places once occupied by the abler and higher-minded statesmen of another day.

In fact, there can be no question, that, while the North, until a comparatively recent date, was in part represented in Congress by members inferior to no statesmen in any country or any age, the Northern standard of qualification had become very sensibly lessened, at a period when the South was more careful to place in positions so responsible her citizens of the most eminent ability, the largest experience, and most thorough training in public business.

There seems to be no other rational mode of accounting for the origin of an expression, first officially employed, it is believed, in one of the resolves passed by the Legislature of Massachusetts, in April, 1847. It is therein alleged, that the highest motives which could possibly commend themselves to patriotic and conscientious citizens, both sanction and require "all constitutional efforts for the destruction of the unjust influence of the slave power, and for the abolition of slavery within the limits of the United States." Nothing can be more obvious, than that the proposition contained within the latter clause of this passage was false both to the spirit and the letter of the Constitution; which was itself founded upon the recognition of slavery, "within the limits of the United States," and upon two several provisions for its maintenance.1 This, therefore, was rank abolitionism, in plain revolt against the Constitution.

Indeed, this coupling of the "abolition of slavery" with the alleged "slave power," clearly betrays the fact that the former, though conveniently shielded by a formal profession, was the real object in view. The point made in the first part of the extract against "the slave power," so called, deserves. an impartial consideration, that it may appear what was the real character and condition of an alleged predominant and

1 The compromise in regard to taxation and representation, and the clause providing for the delivery of fugitive slaves.

"unjust" force, which was thought to call for such efforts (though they could not be constitutional) for its destruction. The expression itself appealed, with no little vivacity, to the imaginations of the excitable portions of the community, to whom it presented the idea of some undefined but portentous monster; and this impression undoubtedly exercised a vast influence in promoting the struggles and final disasters of the country.

After the admission of both Texas and California into the Union, in 1850, there were sixteen free States and fifteen slave States, reckoning among the latter Delaware, which was only nominally in that category. This condition of the case secured a majority of Senators from the free States. Upon questions supposed to involve any test of opinions, the Senators of Delaware had usually acted with the Northern members. Thus, in 1845, Messrs. John M. Clayton and Thomas Clayton were in the minority of 14, upon the final vote for the admission of Texas. In 1850, their successors, Messrs. Spruance and Wales, voted with the majority for the admission of California, as one of the compromise measures of that period. According to the census taken in 1850, the Federal representative population of the United States amounted to 21,767,673. The representative population of the free States, by the tables of the same census, had risen to 13,435,931; leaving, therefore, to the slave States but 8,331,742. The preponderance, in this respect, had been uniformly with the North from the period of the first census in 1790, and at every later enumeration, the ratio had rapidly increased; until the very great disparity had grown up which has just been specified. The Rio Grande, the boundary between Mexico and Texas, might be considered as the extreme limit of the extension of the United States in a southerly direction. Westerly of Texas lay the Territories of New Mexico and California. The principal part of one of these, and about half of the other, were situated below the line of 36° 30′ north latitude; but in neither of them was there slavery, except, perhaps, a score or two of slaves in the first

THE SLAVE POWER A BUGBEAR.

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named Territory, and both of them were ill-adapted to slave labor by the conditions of Nature.

It is true, that, upon the annexation of Texas, it was stipulated that four additional States might be formed out of its extensive domain, either with or without slavery, as the people asking admission, in each State situated below the compromise line, might prefer. But the number of its inhab itants was then less than 200,000, while New York, for example, had at the same time nearly 3,000,000; so that any question of rivalry in those additional States might be deemed fairly relegated to a period somewhat remote. Besides this not very encouraging prospect for "the slave power," there remained the immense Western domain of the United States, north of the compromise line, with room for the seat of half a dozen great empires, and out of small portions of which half a dozen free States have subsequently been formed and admitted to the Union. In this definite view of the case, and in relation to the evident prospects of the country, "the slave power," thus factiously or ignorantly called up by partisans and fanatics, may justly be pronounced the most preposterous phantom ever evoked, to spread needless alarm and to work incalculable and irretrievable mischief; to disturb and break up the peace of a nation, prosperous and blest beyond all parallel; to scar the land with the deep-trenched wounds of fraternal strife, and to spread a cloud of impenetrable shadows over its once benignant and smiling future. In point of fact, at the very moment that this ill-omened cry of "the slave power" was raised, the South was entirely dependent, even for the ability to resist assaults, upon the justice and right feeling of the friends of the Constitution and the Union, whether Whigs or Democrats, in the North.

It is obvious, therefore, that this ominous "slave power," which was made the instrument of exciting such fanciful dread at the North, could not have been the comparatively insignificant body of 300,000 or 400,000 actual slaveholders in the South, in competition with the millions of qualified voters in the free States. It was simply a party cry, raised

against the natural, lawful, and just alliance between the lovers of the Union in both sections; and who were its lovers, not only from the sympathies and affections which had grown up and been fostered by friendly intercourse and community of service in peace and in war, and by pride in the glory and matured vigor of their native land; but from the sacred obligations which bound them, in duty, in judgment, and in feeling, to its organic and fundamental law.'

This was, in fact, the power which the radicals and fanatics strove to break down. One of the most conspicuous of the Whig politicians of that day, who has since that time been more conspicuous still on the Republican side, and who is not among the least responsible for the causes which brought on the war, explained this matter clearly enough, in the course of a highly interesting debate in the Senate, in April, 1850. In reference to certain remarks of Mr. Seward, on the floor of the Senate, Mr. Cass observed:

"If I understood the Senator from New York (Mr. Seward), he intimated his belief that it was immoral to carry into effect the provision of the Constitution for the recapture of fugitive slaves. There, sir, is a very strange view of the duties of a Senator in this body. No man should come here who believes that ours is an immoral Constitution; no man should come here, and by the solemn sanction of an oath, promise to support an immoral Constitution. No man is compelled to take an oath to support it. He may live in this country and believe what he chooses in regard to the Constitution; but he has no right as an honest man to seek office and obtain it, and then talk about its being so immoral that he cannot fulfil his obligations. It is the duty of every man, who has sworn to support the Constitution, fairly to carry its provisions into effect; and no man can stand up before his fellow-citizens and maintain any other doctrine, whatever reasons he may urge in his vindication. ** * In one of the most disingenuous portions of the speech of the honorable Senator from New York-which itself was one of the most disin

1 This sentiment of patriotism, which long bound the two sections so closely together, and while it existed was an insuperable obstacle to the designs of the fanatics, became, therefore, an object of slurring remark with the ideological orators. Their system of benevolence was so much expanded as to be very thin in every part, and did not admit of that local attachment to one's native land which has animated men's souls to noble achievements everywhere, in every age.

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