It is from Texas, especially, that opposition to slavery may be expected. Bordering on free Mexico, it affords, in its Western portion, great facilities for the escape of slaves, and will, on that account, be less affected by slave-owners. There is, besides, in that region, a considerable population of Germans and Northern men, strongly opposed to slavery, and proving by their example the possibility of successful cotton culture without the aid of slavery. These men will strenuously oppose the introduction of slavery into Western Texas, should a New State be there erected, as most likely will soon be the case. Thus, the slave power may find itself vigorously assailed in the rear, and that by its own fancied allies, at the moment it is directing all its energies to oppose the enemy in front. Placed thus between two fires, slavery could not long sustain the unequal combat.

Besides these great divisions between the States, there are minor divisions in the interior of the several States, which will prevent united action in defence of slavery. Thus the planters of the lowland districts are socially and politically opposed to the small farmers of the upland districts. The former are the aristocracy of the South—the slave power par excellence; the latter are essentially a democracy, and have but a slight interest in the institution of slavery. In the upland districts of Virginia and Tennessee, the percentage of slave population is, respectively, 11.3 and 8.6; while in the aristocratic lowlands it is 47.5 and 31.7, or nearly four times as great. In Beaufort, Colleton, and Georgetown

three important planting counties on the seaboard of South Carolina the slaves constitute eighty-four per cent. of the total population, while in the three upland counties of Pickens, Spartanburg, and Greenville they only amount to thirty per cent.

In the mountainous regions of the Slave States — even of the Carolinas there is an industrious yeomanry, who till their farms, themselves and their sons, with little negro help. This is a stalwart, laborious, independent population; the pith of the Slave States. The Alleghenies are the backbone of the United States, and their inhabitants are the strength of the American people.

This yeoman class is also as in the North- decidedly democratic in its political leanings. The slave-aristocracy has hitherto

managed mainly by working on their pro-slavery prejudices to enlist this fierce democracy in the cause of the oligarchical supremacy of the South; but this political maneuver cannot succeed much longer. The democratic farmers of the upland districts will not always consent to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the lordly planters. Already there are symptoms of defection. The more intelligent of the yeomen are tiring of this catspaw system. Their direct interest in slavery is too slight to make it an object of preeminent importance in their eyes, and they feel even more keenly than the North the undue political influence which the planter-aristocracy wields, by virtue of its slave representation.

Further; among the commercial class of the South there is much concealed hostility to slavery. This is particularly the case in the large trading towns of the frontier States; in Wheeling, Virginia; in Louisville, Kentucky; and, above all, in St. Louis, Missouri. In St. Louis there are about 30,000 Germans, all to a man opposed to slavery. Indeed, slavery in St. Louis exists only in name. When the time comes, the party of freedom in the Slave States will find itself suddenly endowed with unlooked-for strength. Two-thirds or three-fourths of the commercial business of the South are carried on by Northern men or foreigners. At present these men hold their peace; they bide their time. But many of them hate the system they are forced to endure. They see clearly the evils for themselves and others of a system that is forced upon the community by a privileged class, and will lose no opportunity of putting an end to it. . .

1

The attempt of the Cotton States to divide the country upon the line between free and slaveholding territory, has signally failed. In large portions of every State in which slaves are held, they are not the paramount interest. In such the conviction is universal that they must, ere long, give way to labor better adapted to their soil and climate, and to the development of their resources. In all such districts, consequently, we find loyalty to government, and sympathy with the North.

1 The Effect of Secession upon the Commercial Relations between the North and South [1861], pp. 66-70.

This want of homogeneousness has already divided the people of the Southern States into two hostile camps. It is the South seceding from the South, showing a confederacy co-extensive with territory in which slaves are held to be impossible. In more than one-half of this territory, the staples, for the cultivation of which slave labor is considered necessary, cannot be grown. Where they cannot, its industries are identical with those of the Northern States. It has the climate of the North, from its great elevation above the sea. Upon it the slave comprises only a small fraction of the population. If we start from the southwest corner of Maryland, and follow, to the southern boundary of Virginia, the ridge separating the waters flowing into the Ohio from those flowing into the Atlantic, we shall divide the State into nearly equal parts. Continued southward in the same general direction, we include mountainous portions of North Carolina and Georgia, and following west in the direction of the Alleghany range, the northern portion of Alabama. The western boundary of this territory would include one-third of Kentucky and three-eighths of Tennessee, the whole embracing about 75,000 square miles, forming a compact and contiguous mass. It has a width, from east to west, of over two hundred miles, and a length, from north to south, of over four hundred, and embraces the whole elevated plain from which the Alleghanies rise. It presents similar topographical and climatic features for its entire extent.

The population of this territory, by counties, free and slave, according to the Census of 1850 was as follows: