According to my
thinking such protective laws are bad; but they created no special
hardship on the South.
By any such a theory of complaint all
sections of all nations have ground of complaint against any other
section which receives special protection under any law. The
drinkers of beer in England should secede because they pay a tax,
whereas the consumers of paper pay none. The navigation laws of the
States are no doubt injurious to the mercantile interests of the
States. I at least have no doubt on the subject. But no one will
think that secession is justified by the existence of a law of
questionable expediency. Bad laws will go by the board if properly
handled by those whom they pinch, as the navigation laws went by the
board with us in England.
As to that Fugitive Slave Law, it should be explained that the
grievance has not arisen from the loss of slaves. I have heard it
stated that South Carolina, up to the time of the secession, had
never lost a slave in this way - that is, by Northern opposition to
the Fugitive Slave Law; and that the total number of slaves escaping
successfully into the Northern States, and there remaining through
the non-operation of this law, did not amount to five in the year.
It has not been a question of property, but of feeling. It has been
a political point; and the South has conceived - and probably
conceived truly - that this resolution on the part of Northern States
to defy the law with reference to slaves, even though in itself it
might not be immediately injurious to Southern property, was an
insertion of the narrow end of the wedge.
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