etic pen, nibbed by
the experience of a Senator for thirty years, and as a slaveholder.
He had actively participated in most of the events of which he
speaks, and was personally familiar with all of them.(123)

"But I am not now writing the history of the present slavery
agitation--a history which the young have not learnt, and the old
have forgotten, and which every American ought to understand. I
only indicate cardinal points to show its character; and of these
a main one remains to be stated. Up to Mr. Pierce's administration
the plan had been defensive--that is to say, to make the secession
of the South a measure of self-defence against the abolition
encroachments, aggressions, and crusades of the North. In the time
of Mr. Pierce, the plan became offensive--that is to say, to commence
the expansion of slavery, and the acquisition of territory to spread
it over, so as to overpower the North with new slave States, and
drive them out of the Union. In this change of tactics originated
the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise, the attempt to purchase
one half of Mexico, and the actual purchase of a large part; the
design to take Cuba; the encouragement to Kinney and to Walker in
Central America; the quarrels with Great Britain for outlandish
coasts and islands; the designs upon the Tehuantepec, the Nicaragua,
the Panama, and the Darien routes; and the scheme to get a foothold
in the Island of San Domingo. The rising in the free States in
consequence of the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise checked
these schemes, and limited the success of the disunionists to the
revival of the agitation which enables them to wield the South
against the North in all the Federal elections and Federal legislation.
Accidents and events have given this part a strange pre-eminence--
under Jackson's administration proclaimed for treason; since, at
the head of the government and of the Democratic party. The death
of Harrison, and the accession of Tyler, was their first great
lift; the election of Mr. Pierce was their culminating point. It
not only gave them the government, but power to pass themselves
for the Union party, and for democrats; and to stigmatize all who
refused to go with them as disunionists and abolitionists. And to
keep up this classification is the object of the eleven pages of
the message which calls for this Review--unhappily assisted in that
object by the conduct of a few real abolitionists (not five per
centum