The people of the North have to manage a rocky and reluctant soil; hence commerce and the fisheries early attracted their attention. The products of these employments were, as they should be, proportioned to the dexterity and hard labor required in their pursuit. The North grew opulent; and her politicians, who came in contact with those of the South with any thing like rival pretensions, represented the commercial class, which was the nucleus of the old Federal party.
The Southerners have a genial climate and a fertile soil; but in consequence of the cumbrous machinery of slave labor, which is slow for every thing, (except exhausting the soil,) they have always been less prosperous than the free States. It is said, I know not with how much truth, but it is certainly very credible, that a great proportion of their plantations are deeply mortgaged in New-York and Philadelphia. It is likewise said that the expenses of the planters are generally one or two years in advance of their income. Whether these statements be true or not, the most casual observer will decide, that the free States are uniformly the most prosperous, notwithstanding the South possesses a political power, by which she manages to check-mate us at every important move. When we add this to the original jealousy spoken of by Mr. Madison, it is not wonderful that Southern politicians take so little pains to conceal their strong dislike of the North.
A striking difference of manners, also caused by slavery, serves to aggravate other differences. Slaveholders have the
habit of command; and from the superior ease with which it sits upon them, they seem to imagine that they were "born to command," and we to obey. In time of war, they tauntingly told us that we might furnish the men, and they would furnish the officers; but in time of peace they find our list of pensioners so large, they complain that we did furnish so many men.
At the North, every body is busy in some employment, and politics, with very few exceptions, form but a brief episode in the lives of the citizens. But the Southern politicians are men of leisure. They have nothing to do but to ride round their plantations, hunt, attend the races, study politics for the next legislative or congressional campaign, and decide how to use the prodigious mechanical power, of slave representation, which a political Archimedes may effectually wield for the destruction of commerce, or any thing else, involving the prosperity of the free States.[AC]
[AC] The Hon. W. B. Seabrook, a southern gentleman, has lately written a pamphlet on the management of slaves, in which he says: "An addition of one million dollars to the private fortune of Daniel Webster, would not give to Massachusetts more than she now possesses in the federal councils. On the other hand, every increase of slave property in South Carolina, is a fraction thrown into the scale, by which her representation in Congress is determined."
It has been already said, that most of the wealth in New-England was made by commerce; consequently the South became unfriendly to commerce. There was a class in New-England, jealous, and not without reason, of their own commercial aristocracy. It was the policy of the South to foment their passions, and increase their prejudices. Thus was the old Democratic party formed; and while that party honestly supposed they were merely resisting the encroachments of a nobility at home, they were actually playing a game for one of the most aristocratic classes in the world—viz. the Southern planters. A famous slave-owner and politician openly boasted, that the South could always put down the aristocracy of the North, by means of her own democracy. In this point of view, democracy becomes a machine used by one aristocratic class against another, that has less power, and is therefore less dangerous.
There are features in the organization of society, resulting from slavery, which are conducive to any thing but the union of these States. A large class are without employment, are accustomed
to command, and have a strong contempt for habits of industry. This class, like the nobility of feudal times, are restless, impetuous, eager for excitement, and prompt to settle all questions with the sword. Like the fierce old barons, at the head of their vassals, they are ever ready to resist and nullify the central power of the State, whenever it interferes with their individual interests, or even approaches the strong holds of their prejudices. All history shows, that men possessing hereditary, despotic power, cannot easily be brought to acknowledge a superior, either in the administrators of the laws, or in the law itself. It was precisely such a class of men that covered Europe with camps, for upwards of ten centuries.
A Southern governor has dignified duelling with the name of an "institution;" and the planters generally, seem to regard it as among those which they have denominated their "peculiar institutions." General Wilkinson, who was the son of a slave-owner, expresses in his memoirs, great abhorrence of duelling, and laments the powerful influence which his father's injunction, when a boy, had upon his after life: "James," said the old gentleman, "if you ever take an insult, I will disinherit you."