ersuaded that there was such a
slave interest, perhaps the best presentation is to be found
in Professor Dodd's Life of Jefferson Davis.

These two issues Yancey, however, failed to unite, though the commercial
convention of 1859 at last gave its support to a resolution that all
laws, state or federal, prohibiting the African slave trade ought to be
repealed. That great body of Northern capital which had dealings with
the South was ready, as it always had been, to finance any scheme that
Southern business desired. Slavers were fitted out in New York, and
the city authorities did not prevent their sailing. Against this somber
background stands forth that much admired action of Lewis Cass of
Michigan, Buchanan's Secretary of State. Already the slave trade was
in process of revival, and the British Navy, impelled by the powerful
anti-slavery sentiment in England, was active in its suppression.
American ships suspected of being slavers were visited and searched.
Cass seized his opportunity, and declaring that such things "could not
be submitted to by an independent nation without dishonor," sent out
American warships to prevent this interference. Thereupon the British
government consented to give up trying to police the ocean against
slavers. It is indeed true, therefore, that neither North nor South has
an historical monopoly of the support of slavery!

It is but fair to add that, so far as the movement to reopen the slave
trade found favor outside the slave barons and their New York allies,
it was advocated as a means of political defense, of increasing Southern
population as an offset to the movement of free emigration into the
North, and of keeping the proportion of Southern representation in
Congress. Stephens, just after Cass had successfully twisted the lion's
tail, took this position in a speech that caused a sensation. In a
private letter he added, "Unless we get immigration from abroad, we
shall have few more slave states. This great truth seems to take the
people by surprise. Some shrink from it as they would from death. Still,
it is as true as death." The scheme, however, never received general
acceptance; and in the constitution of the Southern Confederacy there
was a section prohibiting the African slave trade. On the other of
these two issues--the independence of the South--Yancey steadily
gained ground. With each year from 1856 to 1860, a larger proportion of
Southerners drew out of political evas