e growth and expansion. Each found ample opportunity to
flourish according to its nature and necessities, modified, it may be,
but not destroyed, by the unfavorable institutions which coexisted with
it. The organization of separate colonies, and afterward of separate
States, measurably independent, afforded these two irreconcilable
systems full opportunity for complete development, and rendered it
possible for them to maintain, each, a distinct existence in different
localities, and to unfold their respective natures and tendencies, with
comparatively little interference of the one with the other. Thus
slavery soon became extinct in Massachusetts, and died out rather more
slowly in the other Free States of the original thirteen. It flourished
in Maryland and Virginia, and later, from peculiar circumstances, it
grew rank, with unexampled fecundity, in the Carolinas and Georgia. Had
the Government of the United States been consolidated, the conditions of
slavery and free labor would have been wholly different; and it is
reasonable to infer that the course of development of the respective
systems would have been materially modified, if not altogether changed.
We may pronounce with certainty that the institution would not have
become extinct in the whole country as soon as it did in Massachusetts,
or, indeed, in any one of the present Free States; but we cannot assert
that the converse of this proposition would have been true, and that the
Government, as a centralized power, would have abolished slavery more
certainly, and sooner, than the most backward of the separate States may
now be expected to do, under the complex forms of our present
Constitution. In a consolidated government, the power of the majority
would have been competent to effect fundamental and universal changes,
even to the extent of abolishing slavery; but without the existence of
separate States, with their independent local legislation and
administrations, the gradual undermining and destruction of the old
system would have been a process of extreme procrastination and
difficulty. It would have been a gigantic undertaking, convulsing the
whole nation whenever attempted, and yet demanding the exercise of its
united authority for its accomplishment. We should not have had the
effective antagonism of the Free against the Slave States, nor the
demonstration which results from the striking contrasts between the two
systems in their effects on civilization, in a