Formerly, there was but one opinion among Americans on the subject of slavery.  The Southerners may have considered it as a necessary evil; in any case, they considered it as an evil.  Carolina herself nobly resisted its introduction upon her soil; other colonies did the same.  Washington inscribed the wish in his will that so baleful an institution might be promptly suppressed.  To pen up slavery, to prevent its extension, to reduce it to the role of a local and temporary fact, which it was determined to restrain still more—­such was the sentiment which prevailed in the South, as in the North.  And, in fact, slavery was ere long abolished in the majority of the States composing the Union.  To-day, slavery has become a beneficent, evangelical institution, the corner-stone of republics, the foundation of all liberties; it has become a source of blessings for the blacks as for the whites.  We not only are not to think of reducing the number of slave States, but it becomes important to increase them unceasingly:  to interdict to slavery the entrance into a new territory is almost iniquitous.  Such are the theories proclaimed by the governors, by the legislators of the cotton States; they propose them openly, without scruple and without circumlocution, under the name of political—­what do I say? of moral and Christian axioms.  For these theories they take fire, they become excited; they feel that enthusiasm which was inspired in other times by the love of liberty.  See entire populations, who, under the eye of God, and invoking his support, devote themselves, body, soul, and goods, to the holy cause of slavery, its conquests, its indefinite extension, its inter-State and African trade.

And the conquests of slavery do not figure only in platforms; they are pursued and accomplished effectively on the soil of America.  In the face of the nineteenth century, free Texas has been transformed into a slave State.  To create other slave countries is the aim proposed; and slave countries multiply, and the South does not tolerate the slightest obstacle to conquests of this kind, and it goes forward, and nothing stops it—­I am wrong, the election of Mr. Lincoln has stopped it, and this is why its fury breaks out to-day.

One would he furious for less cause!  Every thing had gone so well till then!  The South spoke as a master, and the North humbly bowed its head before its imperious commands.  Its exactions increased from day to day, and it was not difficult to see to what abysses it was leading the entire American Union.  Shall we give our readers an idea of this crescendo of pretensions?