It is easy to see how time has brought about such a
revolution of feeling and idea respecting slavery.
It can be shown that circumstances have changed altogether
the relations of slavery, and while names have remained
the same, the things which they represent have assumed
a radical difference. It can be shown that the
introduction of the cotton-gin, and the increased
profits of slave labor, have given an impetus to the
domestic institution that brings with it an entire
revolution of opinion. When slavery was unprofitable
to the slaveholders; when, in the early days of the
republic, the number of slaves was comparatively small;
when, all over the country, the veterans of the Revolution
existed to testify to the hardships they endured for
national independence, and eulogize even the help of
the negro in securing it, then slavery was regarded
a curse, an evil to be curtailed and in time obliterated;
then the local character of slavery, as the creature
of municipal law, not to be recognized where such law
does not exist, was the opinion universally of the
people. But now, with the growing profits of
slavery, with the increase of the power of this institution,
other and far different language is held. Disguise
it as we may, there do exist great motives that have
silently yet powerfully operated within the last thirty
or forty years, to change the popular current of feeling
and opinion. Not only have the slave States held
the balance of political power, but the spread of
slavery has been gigantic. The fairest regions
of the South have been opened up to the domestic institution,
and Texas annexed, with Louisiana, Arkansas and Florida,
making an immense area of country, to be the nursery
of slavery. The political ascendency of the slave
States has ever given to the South a great advantage,
in the extension of their favored institution, and
the result has proved that what our ancestors looked
upon as an evil that time would soon do away with,
has grown into a monster system that threatens to
make subservient to it the free institutions of the
North.
Slavery has now come to be a mighty energy of disquietude
all over the country, assuming colossal proportions
of mischief, and mocking all the ordinary restraints
of law. The question of the present day to be
decided is not whether freedom and slavery shall exist
side by side, nor whether slavery shall be tolerated
as a necessary evil; but in reality, whether freedom
shall be crushed under the iron hoof of slavery, and
this institution shall obtain the complete control
of the country. It has been said that the Constitution
takes the position of complete indifference to slavery;
but the history of the slave States does not lead
us to infer that they were ever willing that slavery
should be tested by its own merits, or stand without
the most persistent efforts to secure for it the patronage
of the Federal Government. Study the progress
of slavery, the last forty years, and none can fail
to see that it has ever aimed to secure first the