In That Way The South Has Lived And Struggled On Against The Growing Will Of The Population; But At Last That Will Became Too Strong, And When Mr. Lincoln Was Elected, The South Knew That Its Day Was Over.

It is not surprising that the South should have desired secession. It is not surprising that it should have prepared for it.

Since the days of Mr. Calhoun its leaders have always understood its position with a fair amount of political accuracy. Its only chance of political life lay in prolonged ascendency at Washington. The swelling crowds of Germans, by whom the Western States were being filled, enlisted themselves to a man in the ranks of abolition. What was the acquisition of Texas against such hosts as these? An evil day was coming on the Southern politicians, and it behooved them to be prepared. As a separate nation - a nation trusting to cotton, having in their hands, as they imagined, a monopoly of the staple of English manufacture, with a tariff of their own, and those rabid curses on the source of all their wealth no longer ringing in their ears, what might they not do as a separate nation? But as a part of the Union, they were too weak to hold their own if once their political finesse should fail them. That day came upon them, not unexpected, in 1860, and therefore they cut the cable.

And all this has come from slavery. It is hard enough, for how could the South have escaped slavery? How, at least, could the South have escaped slavery any time during these last thirty years? And is it, moreover, so certain that slavery is an unmitigated evil, opposed to God's will, and producing all the sorrows which have ever been produced by tyranny and wrong? It is here, after all, that one comes to the difficult question. Here is the knot which the fingers of men cannot open, and which admits of no sudden cutting with the knife. I have likened the slaveholding States to the drunken husband, and in so doing have pronounced judgment against them. As regards the state of the drunken man, his unfitness for partnership with any decent, diligent, well-to-do wife, his ruined condition, and shattered prospects, the simile, I think, holds good. But I refrain from saying that as the fault was originally with the drunkard in that he became such, so also has the fault been with the slave States. At any rate I refrain from so saying here, on this page. That the position of a slaveowner is terribly prejudicial, not to the slave, of whom I do not here speak, but to the owner; of so much at any rate I feel assured. That the position is therefore criminal and damnable, I am not now disposed to take upon myself to assert.

The question of slavery in America cannot be handled fully and fairly by any one who is afraid to go back upon the subject, and take its whole history since one man first claimed and exercised the right of forcing labor from another man. I certainly am afraid of any such task; but I believe that there has been no period yet, since the world's work began, when such a practice has not prevailed in a large portion, probably in the largest portion, of the world's work fields. As civilization has made its progress, it has been the duty and delight, as it has also been the interest of the men at the top of affairs, not to lighten the work of the men below, but so to teach them that they should recognize the necessity of working without coercion. Emancipation of serfs and thrals, of bondsmen and slaves, has always meant this - that men having been so taught, should then work without coercion.

In talking or writing of slaves, we always now think of the negro slave. Of us Englishmen it must at any rate be acknowledged that we have done what in us lay to induce him to recognize this necessity for labor. At any rate we acted on the presumption that he would do so, and gave him his liberty throughout all our lands at a cost which has never yet been reckoned up in pounds, shillings, and pence. The cost never can be reckoned up, nor can the gain which we achieved in purging ourselves from the degradation and demoralization of such employment. We come into court with clean hands, having done all that lay with us to do to put down slavery both at home and abroad. But when we enfranchised the negroes, we did so with the intention, at least, that they should work as free men. Their share of the bargain in that respect they have declined to keep, wherever starvation has not been the result of such resolve on their part; and from the date of our emancipation, seeing the position which the negroes now hold with us, the Southern States of America have learned to regard slavery as a permanent institution, and have taught themselves to regard it as a blessing, and not as a curse.

Negroes were first taken over to America because the white man could not work under the tropical heats, and because the native Indian would not work. The latter people has been, or soon will be, exterminated - polished off the face of creation, as the Americans say - which fate must, I should say, in the long run attend all non- working people. As the soil of the world is required for increasing population, the non-working people must go. And so the Indians have gone. The negroes, under compulsion, did work, and work well; and under their hands vast regions of the western tropics became fertile gardens. The fact that they were carried up into northern regions which from their nature did not require such aid, that slavery prevailed in New York and Massachusetts, does not militate against my argument.

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