ir numbers. They were knit
together by the bonds of a common interest. They had leisure and wealth.
They could travel and attend conferences and conventions. Throughout the
South and largely in the North, they had the press, the schools, and the
pulpits on their side. They formed, as it were, a mighty union for the
protection and advancement of their common cause. Aided by those
mechanics and farmers of the North who stuck by Jacksonian Democracy
through thick and thin, the planters became a power in the federal
government. "We nominate Presidents," exultantly boasted a Richmond
newspaper; "the North elects them."

This jubilant Southern claim was conceded by William H. Seward, a
Republican Senator from New York, in a speech describing the power of
slavery in the national government. "A party," he said, "is in one sense
a joint stock association, in which those who contribute most direct the
action and management of the concern.... The slaveholders, contributing
in an overwhelming proportion to the strength of the Democratic party,
necessarily dictate and prescribe its policy." He went on: "The
slaveholding class has become the governing power in each of the
slaveholding states and it practically chooses thirty of the sixty-two
members of the Senate, ninety of the two hundred and thirty-three
members of the House of Representatives, and one hundred and five of the
two hundred and ninety-five electors of President and Vice-President of
the United States." Then he considered the slave power in the Supreme
Court. "That tribunal," he exclaimed, "consists of a chief justice and
eight associate justices. Of these, five were called from slave states
and four from free states. The opinions and bias of each of them were
carefully considered by the President and Senate when he was appointed.
Not one of them was found wanting in soundness of politics, according to
the slaveholder's exposition of the Constitution." Such was the Northern
view of the planting interest that, from the arena of national politics,
challenged the whole country in 1860.

[Illustration: DISTRIBUTION OF SLAVES IN THE SOUTHERN STATES]

SLAVERY IN NATIONAL POLITICS

=National Aspects of Slavery.=--It may be asked why it was that slavery,
founded originally on state law and subject to state government, was
drawn into the current of national affairs. The answer is simple. There
were, in the first place, constitutional reasons. The Congress of the
United St