id the same. Washington
inscribed the wish in his will that so baleful an institution might be
promptly suppressed. To pen up slavery, to prevent its extension, to
reduce it to the _role_ of a local and temporary fact, which it was
determined to restrain still more--such was the sentiment which
prevailed in the South, as in the North. And, in fact, slavery was ere
long abolished in the majority of the States composing the Union.
To-day, slavery has become a beneficent, evangelical institution, the
corner-stone of republics, the foundation of all liberties; it has
become a source of blessings for the blacks as for the whites. We not
only are not to think of reducing the number of slave States, but it
becomes important to increase them unceasingly: to interdict to slavery
the entrance into a new territory is almost iniquitous. Such are the
theories proclaimed by the governors, by the legislators of the cotton
States; they propose them openly, without scruple and without
circumlocution, under the name of political--what do I say? of moral and
Christian axioms. For these theories they take fire, they become
excited; they feel that enthusiasm which was inspired in other times by
the love of liberty. See entire populations, who, under the eye of God,
and invoking his support, devote themselves, body, soul, and goods, to
the _holy_ cause of slavery, its conquests, its indefinite extension,
its inter-State and African trade.

And the conquests of slavery do not figure only in platforms; they are
pursued and accomplished effectively on the soil of America. In the face
of the nineteenth century, free Texas has been transformed into a slave
State. To create other slave countries is the aim proposed; and slave
countries multiply, and the South does not tolerate the slightest
obstacle to conquests of this kind, and it goes forward, and nothing
stops it--I am wrong, the election of Mr. Lincoln has stopped it, and
this is why its fury breaks out to-day.

One would he furious for less cause! Every thing had gone so well till
then! The South spoke as a master, and the North humbly bowed its head
before its imperious commands. Its exactions increased from day to day,
and it was not difficult to see to what abysses it was leading the
entire American Union. Shall we give our readers an idea of this
crescendo of pretensions?

We will content ourselves with going back to the last Mexican war and to
the Wilmot proviso. This was, as is know