2. In the individual States of the South, the Idea and Party of Slavery has also gained great victories and been uniformly successful; it has extended and strengthened personal slavery, which has now a firmer hold in the minds of the controlling classes of Southern men,—the rich and "educated,"—than in 1776, or ever before. The Southern States are progressively despotic.
Still, in all the Southern States there are exceptional men, hostile to slavery,—the intelligent and religious from conviction, others from mere personal interest. These are Southern men with Northern Principles. They are much oppressed at home—kept from political advancement or social respectability, as much as democrats would be at Rome or Naples,—have no journals and little influence.
3. In the Federal Government, the warfare goes on, each party seeking for mastery over the whole United States—the contest is carried on in Congress, in all the local legislatures; newspapers, speeches, even sermons, resound with the din of battle. See what forces contend and with what results.
The nation lives by its productive industry, whereof there are these five chief departments:—Hunting and Fishing, the appropriation of the spontaneous live products of the land and sea; Agriculture, the use of the productive forces of the earth's surface; Mining, the appropriation of the metallic products of her bosom; Manufactures, the application of toil and thought to the products of Hunting and Fishing, Mining and Agriculture; Commerce, the exchange of value, distribution of the products of these four departments of industry, directly productive.
Hunting and Fishing, Mining, Manufactures, Commerce, are mainly in the hands of Northern men—the South is almost wholly Agricultural. Her wealth consists of land and slaves. In 1850 the fifteen slave States had not fourteen hundred millions of other property. In the South property, with its consequent influence, is in few hands—in the North it is wide spread.
Now the few controlling men of the South, the holders of land and slaves, have Unity of pecuniary Interest—the support of Slavery as a local measure,—for it is the source of their material wealth, and also a consequent Unity of political Idea, the support of Slavery as a universal Principle, for it is the source likewise of their political power. Accordingly the South presents against the North an even and well-disciplined front of veteran soldiers, is always hostile to Freedom, and as her "best educated" men devote much time to politics, making it the profession of their whole lives, it is plain they become formidable antagonists.
But the North has a great variety of conflicting interests, a great amount of intellectual activity, where education and its consequent habits of reading and thinking are so wide spread, and therefore a great variety of opinion. Accordingly there is not the same Unity of pecuniary Interest and of political Idea, which distinguishes the South. Besides, in the North the ablest and best educated men do not devote their time to the thankless and stormy calling of politics; Virginia cares for nothing but Negroes and Politics, her loins and her brains gender but this twofold product: Massachusetts and New York care for much beside. So the North does not present against the South an even and well-disciplined front of veteran soldiers, but a ragged, discordant line of raw recruits, enlisting for a short time with some special or even personal local interest to serve.
What makes the matter yet worse for us, Gentlemen of the Jury, is this: While the great mass of the people at the North, engrossed in direct productive industry, are really hostile to slavery, those absorbed in the large operations of commerce, taken as a whole class, feel little interest in the Idea of Freedom; nay, they are positively opposed to it. Before the African Slave-trade was treated like other kindred forms of piracy, as a capital crime, they had their ships in that felonious traffic; and now their vessels engage in the American Slave-trade and their hand still deals in the bodies of their fellow men. In all the great commercial cities, like Philadelphia, New York and Boston these men prevail, and are the "eminent citizens," overslaughing the press, the pulpit, the bar, and the court, with the Ideas of their lower law, and sweeping along all metropolitan and suburban fashion and respectability in their slimy flood. Hence the great cities of the North, governed by the low maxims of this class, have become the asylum of Northern men with Southern "Principles," and so the strong-hold of Slavery. And hitherto these great cities have controlled the politics of the Northern States, crowding the Apostles of Freedom out from the national board, and helping the party of slavery to triumph in all great battles.
Thus aided, for many years the South has always elected her candidate for the Presidency by the vote of the people. But the American Executive is twofold,—part Presidential, part Senatorial. Sometimes these two Executives are concordant, sometimes discordant. The Senatorial Executive has always carried the day against the less permanent Presidential power, except in the solitary case where General Jackson's unconquerable will and matchless popularity enabled him to master the senate itself, who "registered" his decrees, or "expunged" their own censure, just as the iron ruler gave orders.
Now by means of the control which the Northern Cities have over the Northern States, and such Commercial Men over those cities, it has come to pass that not only the Presidential, but also the Senatorial Executive, has long been hostile to the Idea of Freedom.