In 1789 the proportions of
population and wealth in the two sections were very nearly equal. The
slave system of labor had hung as a clog upon the progress of the South,
preventing the natural development of manufactures and commerce, and
shutting out immigration. As the numerical disproportion between the two
sections increased, Southern leaders ceased to attempt to control the
House of Representatives, contenting themselves with balancing new
Northern with new Southern States, so as to keep an equal vote in the
Senate. Since 1845 this resource had failed. Five free States, Iowa,
Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, and Oregon, had been admitted, with no
new slave States; Kansas was calling almost imperatively for admission;
and there was no hope of another slave State in future. When the
election of 1860 demonstrated that the progress of the antislavery
struggle had united all the free States, it was evident that it was but
a question of time when the Republican party would control both
branches of Congress and the Presidency, and have the power to make laws
according to its own interpretation of the constitutional powers of the
Federal Government.
The peril to slavery was not only the probable prohibition of the
inter-State slave-trade, though this itself would have been an event
which negro slavery in the South could hardly have long survived.
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