Indeed,
so incompatible are the two systems, that every new State which is
organized within our ever-extending domain makes its first political act
a choice of the one and the exclusion of the other, even at the cost
of civil war, if necessary. The slave States, without law, at the last
national election, successfully forbade, within their own limits, even
the casting of votes for a candidate for President of the United States
supposed to be favorable to the establishment of the free-labor system
in new States.
Hitherto, the two systems have existed in different States, but side by
side within the American Union. This has happened because the Union is
a confederation of States. But in another aspect the United States
constitute only one nation. Increase of population, which is filling
the States out to their very borders, together with a new and extended
network of railroads and other avenues, and an internal commerce which
daily becomes more intimate, is rapidly bringing the States into a
higher and more perfect social unity or consolidation. Thus, these
antagonistic systems are continually coming into closer contact, and
collision results.
Shall I tell you what this collision means? They who think that it is
accidental, unnecessary, the work of interested or fanatical agitators,
and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case altogether.
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