the heart of man, and, in the sunshine and air of freedom,
they must germinate and grow, and eventually produce such fruit as the
eternal laws of God have made necessary from the beginning.

The social question shaped itself amidst the turbulent elements, and
came out clear and well defined, in the perfect contrast and antagonism
of the two sectional systems. Free labor, educated, skilful, prosperous,
self-poised, and independent, grew into great strength, and accumulated
untold wealth, in all the States in which slavery had been supplanted.
Unexampled and prodigious inventive energy had multiplied the physical
power of men by millions, and these wonderful creations of wealth and
power seemed destined to have no bounds in the favored region in which
this system of free labor prevailed. Immigration, attracted by this
boundless prosperity, flowed in with a steady stream, and an overflowing
population was fast spreading the freedom and prosperity of the Northern
States to all the uncultivated regions of the Union.

On the other hand, by a sort of social repulsion--a sort of polarity
which intensifies opposition and repugnance--the theory of slavery was
carried to an extreme never before known in the history of mankind.
Capital claimed to own labor, as the best relation in which the two
could be placed toward each other. The masses of men, compelled to spend
their lives in physical toil, were held to be properly kept in
ignorance, under the guidance of intelligent masters. The skilful
control of the master, when applied to slaves, was hold to be superior
in its results to the self-regulating energies of educated men, laboring
for their own benefit, and impelled by the powerful motives of
self-interest and independent enterprise. The safety of society demanded
the subordination of the laboring class; and especially in free
governments, where the representative system prevails, was it necessary
that working men should be held in subjection. Slavery, therefore, was
not only justifiable; it was the only possible condition on which free
society could be organized, and liberal institutions maintained. This
was 'the corner stone' of the new confederacy. The opposite system in
the free States, at the first touch of internal trouble and civil war,
would prove the truth of the new theory by bread riots and agrarian
overthrow of property and of all other institutions held sacred in the
true conditions of social order.

Such was the