of
population in the Northern States was so unexampled, and so far exceeded
that of the Southern States, that there could be no actual rivalry in
the settlement of the territories. The latter already had more territory
than they could possibly occupy and people. While the Northern
population, swollen by European emigration, was taking possession of the
new territories and filling them with industry and prosperity, slavery
was repelling white emigration, and the South, from sheer want of men,
was wholly unable to meet the competition. Yet, with most unreasonable
clamors, intended only to arouse the passions of the ignorant, Southern
statesmen insisted on establishing the law of slavery where they could
not plant the institution itself. They finally demanded that slavery
should be recognized everywhere within the national domain; and that the
Federal power should be pledged for its protection, even against the
votes of the majority of the people. This was nothing less than an
attempt to check the growth of the country, by the exclusion of free
States, when it was impossible to increase it by the addition of any
others.

Upon the failure of this monstrous demand, civil war was to be
inaugurated! A power which had been relatively dwindling and diminishing
from the beginning--which, in the very nature of things, could not
maintain its equality in numbers and in constitutional weight--this
minority demanded the control of the Government, in its growth, and in
all its policy, and, in the event of refusal, threatened to rend and
destroy it. Such pretensions could not have been made with sincerity.
They were but the sinister means of exciting sectional enmities,
and preparing for the final measures of the great conspiracy.
Having discarded the rational and humane views of their own
fathers--Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and others--it was but the
natural sequel that they should signalize their degeneracy by aiming to
overthrow the work in which those sages had embodied their generous
ideas--the Constitution of the United States and the whole fabric of
government resting upon it.

In what manner these mischievous absurdities became acceptable to the
Southern people--by what psychological miracle so great a transformation
was accomplished in so short a time--is only to be explained by
examining some of the delusions which blinded the authors of the
rebellion, and enabled them to mislead the masses who confided too
implicitly