Will the official re-opening of the slave trade be some day effected without bringing on a storm which will destroy the new Confederacy?  I cannot say.  In any case, I know one thing:  that the value of the slaves, and consequently that of Southern property, will experience a decline greatly exceeding that by which it is now threatened, as it is said, by the abolition tendencies of the North.  Already, through the mere fact of secession, the price of negroes has diminished one-half; and more than one intelligent planter foresees the time when this price shall have diminished three-fourths, perhaps nine-tenths.  Southern fortunes are falling off, therefore, with extreme rapidity, and this arises not only from the anticipated effects of the slave trade, but also from the certainty of being unable henceforth to put a stop to the escape of the slaves.  These escapes, taken all in all, remained insignificant, so long as the Union was maintained; there are not more than fifty thousand free negroes in Canada.  But henceforth the Southern Confederacy will have a Canada everywhere on its frontiers.  How retain that slavery that will escape simultaneously on the North, and the South?  The Southern republic will be as it were the common enemy, and no one assuredly will aid it to keep its slaves.

It must not be believed, moreover, that it will succeed long in preserving itself from intestine divisions—­divisions among the whites.  If, at the first moment, when every thing is easy, unanimity is far from appearing as complete as had been foretold, it will, later, be much worse.  We shall then perceive how prophetic, if I may dare say so, were the often-quoted words of Washington’s farewell address:  “It is necessary that you should accustom yourselves to regard the Union as the palladium of your happiness and your security; that you should watch over it with a jealous eye; that you should impose silence on any who shall ever dare counsel you to renounce it; that you should give vent to all your indignation on the first effort that shall be attempted to detach from the whole any part of the Confederation.”

A very different voice, that of Jefferson, spoke the same language.  A Southern man, addressing himself to the South, which talked already of seceding he described in thrilling words the inevitable consequences of such an act:  “If, to rid ourselves of the present supremacy of Massachusetts and Connecticut, we were to break up the Union, would the trouble stop there?...  We should soon see a Pennsylvanian party and a Virginian party forming, in what remained of the Confederation, and the same party spirit would agitate public opinion.  By what new weapons would these parties be armed, if they had power to threaten each other continually with joining their Northern neighbors, in case things did not go on in such or such a manner!  If we were to reduce our Union to North Carolina and Virginia, the conflict would break out again directly between the representatives of these two States; we should end by being reduced to simple unities.”