e if it did not embrace a narrative of
those differences on the tariff which at times led to serious
disturbance, and, on one memorable occasion, to an actual threat
of resistance to the authority of the government. The division
upon the tariff was never so accurately defined by geographical
lines as was the division upon slavery; but the aggressive elements
on each side of both questions finally coalesced in the same States,
North and South. Massachusetts and South Carolina marched in the
vanguard of both controversies; and the States which respectively
followed on the tariff issue were, in large part, the same which
followed on the slavery question, on both sides of Mason and Dixon's
line. Anti-slavery zeal and a tariff for protection went hand in
hand in New England, while pro-slavery principles became nearly
identical with free-trade in the Cotton States. If the rule had
its exception, it was in localities where the strong pressure of
special interest was operating, as in the case of the sugar-planter
of Louisiana, who was willing to concede generous protection to
the cotton-spinner of Lowell if he could thereby secure an equally
strong protection, in his own field of enterprise, against the
pressing competition of the island of Cuba.

PROTECTION AND FREE-TRADE SECTIONAL.

The general rule, after years of experimental legislation, resolved
itself into protection in the one section and free-trade in the
other. And this was not an unnatural distinction. Zeal against
slavery was necessarily accompanied by an appreciation of the
dignity of free labor; and free labor was more generously remunerated
under the stimulus of protective laws. The same considerations
produced a directly opposite conclusion in the South, where those
interest in slave labor could not afford to build up a class of
free laborers with high wages and independent opinions. The question
was indeed one of the kind not infrequently occurring in the
adjustment of public policies where the same cause is continually
producing different and apparently contradictory effects when the
field of its operation is changed.

The issues growing out of the subject of the tariff were, however,
in many respects entirely distinct from the slavery question. The
one involved the highest moral considerations, the other was governed
solely by expediency. Whether one man could hold property in
another was a question which t