d have been to insist upon the doctrine of the civil
law; to count the slaves only as _pro quadrupedibus_, to be left out of
the enumeration of population as being no part of the State, as horses
and cattle were left out. But the bonds of union hung loosely upon the
sisters a hundred years ago; there was not one of them who did not think
she was able to set up for herself and take her place among the nations
as an independent sovereign; and it is more than likely that half of
them would have refused to wear those bonds any longer on such a
condition. There was no apprehension then that slavery was to become a
power for evil in the State; but there was intense anxiety lest the
States should fly asunder, form partial and local unions among
neighbors, or become entangled in alliances with foreign nations, at the
sacrifice of all, or much, that was gained by the Revolution. To make
any concession, therefore, to slavery for the sake of the Union was
hardly held to be a concession.

The curious student of history, however, who loves to study those
problems of what might have happened if events that did not happen had
come to pass, will find ample room for speculation in the possibilities
of this one. Had there been no compromise, it is as easy to see now, as
it was easy to foresee then, how quickly the feeble bond of union would
have snapped asunder. But nevertheless, if the North had insisted that
the slaves should neither be counted nor represented at all, or else
should be reckoned in full and taxes levied accordingly, the consequent
dissolution of the Confederacy might have had consequences which then
nobody dreamed of. For it is not impossible, it is not even improbable,
that, in that event, the year 1800 would have seen slavery in the
process of rapid extinction everywhere except in South Carolina and
Georgia. Had the event been postponed in those States to a later period,
it would only have been because they had already found in the
cultivation of indigo and rice a profitable use for slave-labor, which
did not exist in the other slave States, where the supply of slaves was
rapidly exceeding the demand. There can hardly be a doubt that, in case
of the dissolution of the Confederacy, the Northern free-labor States
would soon have consolidated into a strong union of their own. There was
every reason for hastening it, and none so strong for hindering it as
those which were overborne in the union which was actually formed so