free labor
would have taken the place of the present system, as it did in the
States farther north. This would have deprived the Southern belt of
cotton-raising and negro-holding States of that sympathy which, under
existing circumstances, they have steadily had from their more northern
sisters, and favored an early extinction of the system. However this
might have been, as things are and have been actually, it is certain
that at no period has the growth of the slaveholding institution
exhibited any weakness or defect of vitality. Like an infant giant, it
has steadily waxed stronger and stronger, and more and more arrogant
and aggressive.

When the anti-slavery agitation commenced at the North, the parties who
engaged in it had no consciousness of the immense magnitude and potent
vitality of the institution against which they proposed to carry on a
moral warfare. They supposed that, as a matter of course, they would
find a universal sympathy throughout the North with doctrines in behalf
of freedom, where freedom was the basis of all our institutions, and
where, apparently, there was no alliance of interest, no possible reason
for a sympathy with slavery or the denial of freedom to man. They were
met unexpectedly by a powerful current of semi-slaveholding opinion
pervading the whole area of the Free States, and ready to deny to them
free speech or the rightfulness of any effort to arouse the people to a
consideration of the subject. When, after some years of contest, this
current of prejudgment was partially reversed, and their new thought
began to find audience by the Northern ear; when, strengthened by
numbers and the better comprehension of the subject by themselves; the
increased determination and enthusiasm which arose from the _esprit du
corps_; and the assurance--satisfactory to themselves at least--that
they were engaged in a good cause; they began to grapple more directly
with intensified and genuine pro-slavery sentiment at the South itself,
they were astonished to find that, instead of battling with a weak
thing, they had engaged in moral strife with one of the most mighty
institutions of the earth.

Pro-slavery sentiment at the South, inherently arrogant and aggressive,
as already said, was, at the same time and from the same causes, aroused
to the consciousness of its own strength. Called on to answer for the
unseemly fact of its existence in the midst of these modern centuries,
when the world boasts of hu