More
stringent provisions for the return of fugitive slaves were asked,
and a law was enacted trampling under foot the very spirit of
liberty, and putting in peril the freedom of men who were citizens
of Northern States. The Missouri Compromise, passed with the
consent and support of the South, was repealed by Southern dictation
the moment its operation was found to be hostile to the spread of
slavery. The rights of slavery in the Territories required judicial
confirmation, and the Supreme Court complied by rendering the famous
decision in the case of Dred Scott. Against all these guaranties
and concessions for the support of slavery, Mr. Davis could quote,
not anti-slavery aggressions which had been made, but only those
which might be made in the future.

SOUTHERN RESISTANCE TO LAW.

This position disclosed the real though not the avowed cause of
the secession movement. Its authors were not afraid of an immediate
invasion of the rights of the slave-holder in the States, but they
were conscious that the growth of the country, the progress of
civilization, and the expansion of our population, were all hostile
to their continued supremacy as the governing element in the
Republic. The South was the only section in which there was
distinctively a governing class. The slave-holders ruled their
States more positively than ever the aristocratic classes ruled
England. Besides the distinction of free and slave, or black and
white, there was another line of demarcation between white men that
was as absolute as the division between patrician and plebeian.
The nobles of Poland who dictated the policy of the kingdom were
as numerous in proportion to the whole population as the rich class
of slave-holders whose decrees governed the policy of their States.
It was, in short, an oligarchy which by its combined power ruled
the Republic. No President of any party had ever been elected who
was opposed to its supremacy. The political revolution of 1860
had given to the Republic an anti-slavery President, and the Southern
men refused to accept the result. They had been too long accustomed
to power to surrender it to an adverse majority, however lawful or
constitutional that majority might be. They had been trained to
lead and not to follow. They were not disciplined to submission.
They had been so long in command that they had become incapable of
obedience. Unwillingness to sub