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CHAPTER V.

THE BATTLE OF THE TERRITORIES--SLAVERY

AND FREE SOIL.

I HAVE been led off the scent by this discussion on slavery, and have almost lost sight of the point which was the sole excuse for bringing it in at all -namely, its bearing on the history of the Union. Perhaps it is a palliation and perhaps an aggravation of my fault to say that I have been as brief as I could about it, and in some ways too brief to be quite clear.

To return then to the history. I said a short time back that, whatever might have been the case with the Gulf States, the institution of slavery would probably have perished out of Virginia and her neighbours of the Border. But the anti-slavery cry put a stop to that prospect. The Border States, perhaps, might have got rid of slavery if they had been left to themselves; but they had no idea of

giving it up on compulsion. Not that any attempt was made to legislate against the institution in Congress. The Constitution was too clear on the subject to make any such attempts at all likely to have any chance of success. But the Abolitionists did what was quite as bad and quite as unconstitutional. In those States where they could command a majority, they passed in the State Legislatures what were called Personal Liberty Bills, which were in fact nullifications of the Fugitive Slave Act. It may be said that these Bills might be unconstitutional, but that they were outbreaks of a noble and generous detestation of the great crime of slavery. But, putting out of the question how far this noble impulsiveness is characteristic of New England, one can understand the Southerners' objecting to their neighbours breaking the law in order to be generous at their expense. There is no doubt of this, that the first Personal Liberty Bill that was passed broke the Federal compact, and might have been held to have destroyed the Union. So that even if secession had been unconstitutional in itself, it would have been made lawful. The South does not require this defence for doing what she had anyhow every right to do, both legally and morally. But there is no harm in setting up this additional buttress to support the building, though it is firm enough without it.

However, this was not the worst part of the business. These Personal Liberty enactments were not very injurious, for I fancy the occasion for putting them into execution did not very often arise, as the Northern States were not such a paradise for the negroes that they often tried to avail themselves of them. And though they were insulting, they were not insults that the South was obliged to notice. But the anti-slavery or rather anti-slaveholder howl that was raised and echoed from platform to platform through many Northern towns, could not help being noticed. It formed the staple of newspaper articles. It was worked up with highly-coloured incidents in sensation novels. It furnished matter for declamation to Northern stump-orators. It was fulminated in the strongest phrases that could be picked out of the Bible by Northern preachers. To people who were with difficulty labouring under the grievous yoke imposed upon them by Northern Protectionists, and who were endeavouring to bear it in order to save the Union, it must have been almost maddening to hear those very Protectionists, who were fattening upon their misery, clamouring to take away from them their only means of living, cursing and denouncing them in the most unmitigated language, and calling the Union a union with death and a covenant with hell, because Southerners were included in

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it. It is in order to keep up this covenant with hell that the denouncers have caused the slaughter of a million of human beings, and the desolation of nearly half a continent. !?

These two great causes of quarrel, Protectionism and Abolitionism, may be said to be the chief elements in the history of the Union. They act and react upon one another. The selfishness of the Protectionists was sanctified, and the zeal of the Abolitionists sharpened, by the fact that their objects coincided. Like the priests of Bel, they offered up the sacrifice with much religious pomp and loud invocations of their deity, and then took care to secure the offering for their own consumption. It was a godly alliance, to be celebrated with much upturning of eyes and much thanksgiving for being not as other men are,—to damage the Southerners, whose interests were opposed to theirs, without benefiting the tarnation niggers; and to smooth their path to heaven by strewing their earthly one with gold.

The irrepressible conflict between North and South was delayed by the fact that the great Democratic party was strong enough to hold in the infuriated extremes of both sections, North and South, without allowing them to come into collision. This party, the only one of the numerous combinations of which America has been so prolific, which can

trace its pedigree back to the foundation of the Union, has been, at least in this century, that which has deserved the name which I believe it is now trying to assume, that of Conservative. It was originally the party of States Rights as against the Union; it has become the party of States Rights for the sake of the Union. I fancy that so long as it was a question of protection and free trade, the Northern Democrats were sectional enough, for in that conflict the Northern champions, though the spirit in which they fought was anti-constitutional, used constitutional weapons. But when the Abolitionist cry was raised, their sympathies were checked. That cry was in direct contravention to the Constitution, and was certain, humanly speaking, to destroy the Union.

It was in the Middle States-New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania — that this party was strongest. I do not know that the character of those States was particularly attractive; but it was less the reverse than that of New England was. They were selfish, and they were disposed to run wild after new fashions. But both their selfishness and their love of new fashions inclined them towards the South. New York became socially, if not politically, the capital of the Union, as it was certainly its greatest commercial city-a sort of mixture of Paris and