on enriching itself: four
States some day to be carved out of Texas, (the South had caused this to
be authorized in advance,) three States to be created in the Island of
Cuba, an indefinite number of States to be detached one after another
from Central America and Mexico? Who clamorously demanded the
reestablishment of the African slave trade, alone capable of peopling
this vast extent, and of lowering the excessive price of the negroes
supplied by the producing States? The extreme South, which alone was
concerned in this, saw gigantic vistas opening before it on which it
fastened with ecstasy. Now, already, in spite of the more or less avowed
support of Mr. Buchanan, its success was already checked, it felt itself
provoked and thwarted. Henceforth, all its hopes were concentrated on
the election of 1860: we may judge, therefore, of its disappointment,
and of the furious ardor with which it must have seized upon its last
resource, namely, secession, which might prove in its hands either a
means of terrifying the North, and of bringing it again under the yoke,
or of entering alone into a new destiny, of having elbow-room, and of
devoting itself entirely to the propagation of slavery!

The facts are known; I do not think of recounting them. I content
myself with remarking the enthusiasm, which prevails in the majority of
the cotton States. One could not commit suicide with a better grace. It
is easy to recognize a country hermetically sealed to contradiction,
which is enchanted with itself, and which ends by accomplishing the most
horrible deeds with a sort of conscientious rejoicing. The enthusiasm
which is displayed in proclaiming secession, or in firing on the
American flag, is displayed in freeing the captain of a slaver, a noble
martyr to the popular cause. There is something terrifying in the
enthusiasm of evil passions. When I consider the folly of the South,
which so heedlessly touches the match to the first cannon pointed
against its confederates; when I see it without hesitation give the
signal for a war in which it runs the risk of perishing; when I read its
laws, decreeing the penalty of death against any one who shall attack
the Palmetto State, and its dispatches, in which the removal of Major
Anderson is exacted, in the tone which a master employs toward a
disobedient servant, I ask myself whether the present crisis could
really have been evaded, and whether any thing less than a rude lesson
could have open