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 they demanded. They looked with utter contempt upon the hard-working men of the North. They determined to rule or ruin. Every Northern man living at the South was looked upon with suspicion. Some were tarred and feathered, others hung, and many were killed in cold blood! No Northern man could open his lips on that subject in the South. Men of the North could not travel there. The noble astronomer, Mitchell, the brave general who has laid down his life for his country, was surrounded by an ignorant, excited mob in Alabama, who were ready to hang him because he told them he was in favor of the Union. But Southern orators and political speakers were invited North, and listened to with respect by the thinking, reasoning people,—the pupils of the common schools.
Climate, trade, commerce, common schools, and industry have made the North different from the South; but there was nothing in these to bring on the war.
When the slaveholders saw that they had lost their power in Congress to pass laws for the extension of slavery, they determined to secede from the Union. When the North elected a President who declared himself opposed to the extension of slavery, they began the war. They stole forts, arsenals, money, steamboats,—everything they could lay their hands on belonging to government and individuals,—seceded from the Union, formed a confederacy, raised an army, and fired the first gun.
They planned a great empire, which should extend south to the Isthmus of Darien and west to the Pacific Ocean, and made slavery its cornerstone. They talked of conquering the North. They declared that the time would come when they would muster their slaves on Bunker Hill, when the laboring men of the North, “with hat in hand, should stand meekly before them, their masters.”[2]
They besieged Fort Sumter, fired upon the ships sent to its relief, bombarded the fort and captured it. To save their country, their government, all that was dear to them, to protect their insulted, time-honored flag, the men of the North took up arms.