an seek to extend
towards the South; hemmed in on all sides by liberty, incessantly
provoked by the impossibility of preventing the flight of their negroes,
they will fall on those of their neighbors who are the least capable of
resistance, and whose territory is most to their convenience. This fact
is obvious, as it is also obvious that they will have recourse to the
African slave trade to people these new possessions. It is in vain to
deny it, on account of Europe, or of the border States; the necessities
will subsist, and, sooner or later, they will be obeyed. If the border
States persist in deluding themselves on this point, and fancy that they
will always keep the monopoly of this infamous supply of negroes sold at
enormous prices, this concerns them. In any case, the illusion will
finally become dispelled. It is not in the nomination of Jefferson Davis
as President of the Confederate States, that we are to look for the
final repudiation of those projects of which this politic man is in some
sort the living representative.

And when they are renewed, we shall see an invincible obstacle rise up
in the way of the realization of a plan so monstrous. As soon as the
African slave trade is established, the domestic slave trade will cease,
the revenues of the producing States will be suppressed, the price of
negroes will fall everywhere, and the fortunes of all the planters will
fall in like proportion. Can it be possible that they will accept the
chances of civil war, of insurrections, and of massacres, in order to
ensure to themselves the risk of ruin in case of success? Can it be
possible, above all, that Europe will lend a hand, as we seem to
imagine, to the most audacious attack ever directed against Christian
civilization?

I know that we must always make allowance for probable perfidy, and I am
far from dreaming, as times go, that chivalric Europe will refuse to
serve her own interests because these interests would cost her
principles something. No, indeed, I imagine nothing of the sort; yet I
think that I should wrong the nineteenth century if I supposed it
capable of certain things. There are sentiments which cannot be provoked
beyond measure with impunity.

Remember the shudder that ran through the world when Texas, a free
country, was transformed into slave territory as the result of the
victory of the United States; multiply the crime of Texas by ten, by
twenty, and you will have a faint image of the impres