to admit, first, that it was a necessary
evil; then that it was a good both to master and slave; then that it
was the corner-stone of free institutions; then that it was a system
divinely instituted under the Old Law and sanctioned under the New.
With a representation, three fifths of it based on the assumption that
negroes are men, the South turns upon us and insists on our
acknowledging that they are things. After compelling her Northern
allies to pronounce the "free and equal" clause of the preamble to the
Declaration of Independence (because it stood in the way of enslaving
men) a manifest absurdity, she has declared, through the Supreme Court
of the United States, that negroes are not men in the ordinary meaning
of the word. To eat dirt is bad enough, but to find that we have eaten
more than was necessary may chance to give us an indigestion. The
slaveholding interest has gone on step by step, forcing concession
after concession, till it needs but little to secure it forever in the
political supremacy of the country. Yield to its latest demand,--let it
mould the evil destiny of the Territories,--and the thing is done past
recall. The next Presidential Election is to say _Yes_ or _No_.

But we should not regard the mere question of political preponderancy
as of vital consequence, did it not involve a continually increasing
moral degradation on the part of the Non-slaveholding States,--for Free
States they could not be called much longer. Sordid and materialistic
views of the true value and objects of society and government are
professed more and more openly by the leaders of popular outcry,--for
it cannot be called public opinion. That side of human nature which it
has been the object of all lawgivers and moralists to repress and
subjugate is flattered and caressed; whatever is profitable is right;
and already the slave-trade, as yielding a greater return on the
capital invested than any other traffic, is lauded as the highest
achievement of human reason and justice. Mr. Hammond has proclaimed the
accession of King Cotton, but he seems to have forgotten that history
is not without examples of kings who have lost their crowns through the
folly and false security of their ministers. It is quite true that
there is a large class of reasoners who would weigh all questions of
right and wrong in the balance of trade; but we cannot bring ourselves
to believe that it is a wise political economy which makes cotton by
unmaking