, it would become as free as
Massachusetts. That was what the people had never before achieved: _a
free field to work for a Christian democracy_. God bless the sturdy
people of New England and the Middle States for this! God bless George
Washington and Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall and the liberal gentlemen
of the Old Dominion, for helping the people do it. They did not win the
victory, as many have supposed; but they bravely helped to lead the
people of the Free States to this great military and civil achievement.
Virginia was richly paid for the service of her aristocracy. But history
tells us who did the work, and how nobly it was done.

The republic was now established, with a Constitution which might be
made to uphold a democratic or an aristocratic government, as either
party should triumph. The Slave Power, forced half reluctantly into the
Union, now began to conspire to rule it for its own uses. All that was
necessary, it thought, was to unite the aristocracy against the people.
And this work was at once well begun. The first census was taken in
1790, and the last in 1860. This period divides itself, historically,
into two portions. The thirty years from 1780 may be regarded as the
period of the _consolidation of the Slave Power, and its first distinct
appearance as a great sectional aristocracy in 1820, in the struggle
that resulted in the 'Missouri Compromise_.' The forty years succeeding
1820 may be called the period of the _consolidation of freedom to resist
this assault, and the final triumph of democracy in 1860, by the
election of a President_.

The first thirty years was a period of incessant activity by the slave
aristocracy. It incurred a nominal loss in the abolition of slavery in
eight Eastern and Middle States, and the consecration of the great
Northwestern territory to freedom; out of which three great Free States
had already been carved; making, in 1820, eleven Free States. But it had
gained by the concentration of its power below the line of the Ohio and
Pennsylvania boundary, the division of the territory belonging to the
Carolinas, and the Louisiana purchase; whereby it had gained five new
Slave States; making the number of Slave States equal to the
Free--eleven. It put forward the liberal aristocracy of Virginia to
occupy the Presidential chair during thirty-two of the thirty-six years
between 1789 and 1825; thus compelling Virginia and Maryland to a firm
alliance with itself. It had man[oe