The Continental Monthly, Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 | Page 3

its dazzling plans of conquest and occupation.
A comfortable arrangement truly, and one very easy of accomplishment,--provided the free States would consent.
'Certainly they will consent. Trade, commerce, manufactures and mechanical pursuits, occupy them exclusively, and these promise better results under the new order of things than under the old. As to patriotism or public spirit, the North have neither. The people do not even resent a personal affront, much less will they go to war for an idea.'
So reasoned the South.
'It is not possible those fellows down yonder can be in earnest. They are only playing the game of "brag." In their hearts they are really devoted to the Union. They have not the least idea of separating from us.'
So reasoned the North.
Neither side thought the other in earnest. Both were mistaken.
Negro slaves were introduced into Virginia as early as 1620. In the year 1786 England employed in the slave-trade 130 ships, and that year alone seized and carried from their homes into slavery 42,000 blacks. Wilberforce experienced many defeats through the influence of the slave-trade interest, but at length carried his point, and the trade was finally abolished in England in 1807,--not a very remote period certainly. The same year witnessed the suppression of the slave-trade in our own country; but, unfortunately, not the abolition of slave-holding. All our readers understand how, when the Constitution of the United States was adopted, slavery was regarded entirely as a domestic matter, left to each of the States to manage and dispose of as each saw fit. But at that period there was no dissenting voice to the proposition, that, abstractly considered, slave-holding was wrong; yet the owner of a large number of negroes could honestly declare he was himself innocent of the first transgression, and ignorant of any practicable way to get rid of the evil,--for it was counted an evil. When the rice, cotton and sugar fields demanded larger developments, it was counted a necessary evil. Congress was called on for more guards and pledges, and gave them freely. It disclaimed any power to interfere with what had now become an institution; it had no power to do so. It went further, and by legislation sought fully to protect the slave-holding States in the perfect enjoyment of their rights under the Constitution.
Meanwhile many wise and good men, North and South, who regarded slavery as a blight and a curse upon the States where it existed, endeavored by all the means in their power to prepare the way for gradual emancipation. It seemed at one time that they would succeed in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky. In Virginia, an emancipation act failed of passing by a single vote.
About the time that Calhoun was spreading the heresy of his state-rights doctrine in South Carolina and taking his 'logical ground' on the slavery question, a class, then almost universally branded as fanatics, but whose proportions have since very largely swelled, arose at the North, which were a match for the South Carolina senator with his own weapons. Each laid hold of an extreme point and maintained it. We refer to the Abolitionists of thirty years ago, under Garrison, Tappan & Co. These people seized on a single idea, exclusive of any other, and went nearly mad over it. Apparently blind to the evils around them, which were close at hand, within their own doors, swelling perhaps in their own hearts, they were suddenly 'brought to see' the 'vile enormity' of slave-holding. Their argument was very simple. 'Slavery is an awful sin in the sight of God. Slave-holders are awful sinners. We of the North, having made a covenant with such sinners, are equally guilty of the sin of slavery with them. Slavery must be immediately abolished. Fiat justitia ruat coelum. Better that the Republic fall than continue in the unholy league one day.' These men were ready to 'dissolve the Union,' to disintegrate the nation, to blast the hopes of perhaps millions of persons over the world, who were watching with anxious hearts the experiment of our government, trembling lest it should fail.
In South Carolina John C. Calhoun was ready to do the same. And thus extremes met.
Meanwhile the Southern conspirators pursued their labors. Gathering up the reports of the meetings of the Abolition Societies, and selecting the most inflammable extracts from the speeches of the most violent, they circulated them far and wide, as indications of the hostile spirit of the North, and as proofs of the impossibility of living under the same government with people who were determined to destroy their domestic institutions and stir up servile insurrections. The Abolitionists saw the alarm of the South, and pressed their advantage. Thus year after year passed, till the memorable November elections of 1860. The conspirators received the intelligence of the election of Lincoln