by the excited assemblage present as traitors to the best interests of the South, and only worthy of expulsion from the body.  The excitement at last grew so high that personal violence was menaced, and some dozen of the more conservative members of the convention withdrew from the hall in which it was holding its sittings."[10] “It was clear,” adds De Bow, “that the people of Vicksburg looked upon it [i.e., the convention] with some distrust."[11] When at last a ballot was taken, the first resolution passed by a vote of 40 to 19.[12] Finally, the 8th Article of the Treaty of Washington was again condemned; and it was also suggested, in the newspaper which was the official organ of the meeting, that “the Convention raise a fund to be dispensed in premiums for the best sermons in favor of reopening the African Slave Trade."[13]

84. Public Opinion in the South. This record of the Commercial Conventions probably gives a true reflection of the development of extreme opinion on the question of reopening the slave-trade.  First, it is noticeable that on this point there was a distinct divergence of opinion and interest between the Gulf and the Border States, and it was this more than any moral repugnance that checked the radicals.  The whole movement represented the economic revolt of the slave-consuming cotton-belt against their base of labor supply.  This revolt was only prevented from gaining its ultimate end by the fact that the Gulf States could not get on without the active political co-operation of the Border States.  Thus, although such hot-heads as Spratt were not able, even as late as 1859, to carry a substantial majority of the South with them in an attempt to reopen the trade at all hazards, yet the agitation did succeed in sweeping away nearly all theoretical opposition to the trade, and left the majority of Southern people in an attitude which regarded the reopening of the African slave-trade as merely a question of expediency.

This growth of Southern opinion is clearly to be followed in the newspapers and pamphlets of the day, in Congress, and in many significant movements.  The Charleston Standard in a series of articles strongly advocated the reopening of the trade; the Richmond Examiner, though opposing the scheme as a Virginia paper should, was brought to “acknowledge that the laws which condemn the Slave-trade imply an aspersion upon the character of the South.[14] In March, 1859, the National Era said:  “There can be no doubt that the idea of reviving the African Slave Trade is gaining ground in the South.  Some two months ago we could quote strong articles from ultra Southern journals against the traffic; but of late we have been sorry to observe in the same journals an ominous silence upon the subject, while the advocates of ‘free trade in negroes’ are earnest and active."[15] The Savannah Republican, which at first declared the movement to be of no serious intent, conceded,