the introduction of
the cotton-gin, and the increased profits of slave labor, have given an
impetus to the domestic institution that brings with it an entire
revolution of opinion. When slavery was unprofitable to the
slaveholders; when, in the early days of the republic, the number of
slaves was comparatively small; when, all over the country, the veterans
of the Revolution existed to testify to the hardships they endured for
national independence, and eulogize even the help of the negro in
securing it, then slavery was regarded a curse, an evil to be curtailed
and in time obliterated; then the local character of slavery, as the
creature of municipal law, not to be recognized where such law does not
exist, was the opinion universally of the people. But now, with the
growing profits of slavery, with the increase of the power of this
institution, other and far different language is held. Disguise it as we
may, there do exist great motives that have silently yet powerfully
operated within the last thirty or forty years, to change the popular
current of feeling and opinion. Not only have the slave States held the
balance of political power, but the spread of slavery has been gigantic.
The fairest regions of the South have been opened up to the domestic
institution, and Texas annexed, with Louisiana, Arkansas and Florida,
making an immense area of country, to be the nursery of slavery. The
political ascendency of the slave States has ever given to the South a
great advantage, in the extension of their favored institution, and the
result has proved that what our ancestors looked upon as an evil that
time would soon do away with, has grown into a monster system that
threatens to make subservient to it the free institutions of the North.

Slavery has now come to be a mighty energy of disquietude all over the
country, assuming colossal proportions of mischief, and mocking all the
ordinary restraints of law. The question of the present day to be
decided is not whether freedom and slavery shall exist side by side, nor
whether slavery shall be tolerated as a necessary evil; but in reality,
whether freedom shall be crushed under the iron hoof of slavery, and
this institution shall obtain the complete control of the country. It
has been said that the Constitution takes the position of complete
indifference to slavery; but the history of the slave States does not
lead us to infer that they were ever willing that slavery should be
tes