tinguished almost
simultaneously with the knowledge of the fact. In the West Indies there
could have been no doubt of this, from the disparity in numbers between
the whites and the slaves, from the multiplied attempts made from time
to time by the latter to vindicate their rights by insurrection, and
from the fact, that all their insurrections had to be suppressed by the
_force_ of the mother country. As soon as Mexico and the South American
colonies dissolved their connexion with Spain, slavery was abolished in
every one of them. This may, I know, be attributed to the necessity
imposed on these states, by the wars in which they engaged to establish
their independence. However this may be--the _fact_ still remains. The
free states of this Union are to the slave, so far as the maintenance of
slavery is concerned, substantially, in the relation of the European
states to their slaveholding colonies. Slavery, in all probability,
could not be maintained by the South disjoined from the North, a single
year. So far from there existing any reason for making the South an
exception, in this particular, to other slave countries, there are
circumstances in her condition that seem to make her dependence more
complete. Two of them are, the superior intelligence of her slaves on
the subject of human rights, and the geographical connexion of the slave
region in the United States. In the West Indies, in Mexico and South
America the great body of the slaves were far below the slaves of this
country in their intellectual and moral condition--and, in the former,
their power to act in concert was weakened by the insular fragments into
which they were divided.

Again, the depopulation of the South of large numbers of its white
inhabitants, from the cause mentioned under the fourth head, would, it
is apprehended, bring the two classes to something like a numerical
equality. Now, consider the present state of the moral sentiment of the
Christianized and commercial world in relation to slavery; add to it the
impulse that this sentiment, acknowledged by the South already to be
wholly opposed to her, would naturally acquire by an act of separation
on her part, with a single view to the perpetuation of slavery; bring
this sentiment in all its accumulation and intensity to act upon a
nation where one half are enslavers, the other the enslaved--and what
must be the effect? From the nature of mind; from the laws of moral
influence, (which are as sure