he better of wealth.

The men of the North were settling the new States of the West, and
political power in Congress was slipping from the hands of the South. To
retain that power they must bring additional Slave States into the
Union. They therefore demanded the right to take their slaves into new
Territories. The Northern school-boys who had grown to be men, who had
gone into the far West to build them homes, could not consent to see
their children deprived of that which had made them men. They saw that
if slavery came in, schools must go out. They saw that where slavery
existed there were three distinct classes in society,--the few rich,
unscrupulous, hard-hearted slaveholders, the many poor, ignorant,
debased white men, and the slaves. They saw that free labor and slave
labor could not exist together. They therefore rightfully resisted the
extension of slavery into the Territories. But the slaveholders carried
the day. The North was outvoted and obliged to yield.

The descendants of the first families of Virginia raised slaves for a
living. It was degrading to labor, but a very honorable way of getting a
living to raise pigs, mules, and negroes,--to sell them to the more
southern States,--to sell their own sons and daughters! Their fathers
purchased wives: why should they not sell their own children?

It was very profitable to raise negroes for the market, and the
ministers of the South, in their pulpits on the Sabbath, said it was a
Christian occupation. They expounded the Bible, and showed the
benevolent designs of God in establishing slavery. It was right. It had
the sanction of the Almighty. It was a Divine missionary institution.

Their political success, their great power, their wealth,--which they
received through the unpaid labor of their slaves, and from selling
their own sons and daughters,--developed their bad traits of character.
They became proud, insolent, domineering, and ambitious. They demanded
the right not only to extend slavery over all the Territories of the
United States, but also the right to take their slaves into the Free
States. They demanded that no one should speak or write against slavery.
They secured the passage of a law by Congress enabling them to catch
their runaway slaves. They demanded that the Constitution should be
changed to favor the growth and extension of slavery. For many years
they plotted against the government,--threatening to destroy it if they
could not have what th