But The North Will Also Claim Maryland And Delaware, And The Eastern Half Of Virginia.

The North will claim them, though they are attached to the South by joint participation in the great social institution of slavery - for Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia are slave States - and I think that the North will ultimately make good its claim.

Maryland and Delaware lie, as it were, behind the capital, and Eastern Virginia is close upon the capital. And these regions are not tropical in their climate or influences. They are and have been slave States, but will probably rid themselves of that taint, and become a portion of the free North.

The Southern or slave States, properly so called, are easily defined. They are Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. The South will also claim Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Virginia, Delaware, and Maryland, and will endeavor to prove its right to the claim by the fact of the social institution being the law of the land in those States. Of Delaware, Maryland, and Eastern Virginia, I have already spoken. Western Virginia is, I think, so little tainted with slavery that, as she stands even at present, she properly belongs to the West. As I now write, the struggle is going on in Kentucky and Missouri. In Missouri the slave population is barely more than a tenth of the whole, while in South Carolina and Mississippi it is more than half. And, therefore, I venture to count Missouri among the Western States, although slavery is still the law of the land within its borders.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 182 of 538
Words from 48331 to 48596 of 143277