They could make more money with
cotton than with corn, or beef, or pork, or leather, or hats, or
wooden-ware; and Northern ships went South to take their forest timbers,
and brought them to Connecticut to be made into wooden-ware and
ax-helves and rake-handles, and carried them right back to sell to the
men whose axes had cut down the trees. The South manufactured nothing
except slaves. It was a great manufacture, that; and the whole market of
the North was bribed. The harness-makers, the wagon-makers, the
clock-makers, makers of all manner of implements, of all manner of
goods, every manufactory, every loom as it clanked in the North said,
"Maintain," not slavery, but the "compromises of the Constitution." The
Constitution--that was the veil under which all these cries were
continually uttered.
The distinction between the Anti-slavery men and Abolitionists was
simply this: The Abolitionists disclaimed the obligation to maintain
this government and the compromises of the Constitution, and the
Anti-slavery men recognized the binding obligation and sought the
emancipation of slaves by the more circuitous and gradual influence; but
Abolitionism covered both terms. It was regarded, however, throughout
the North as a greater sin than slavery itself, and none of you that are
under thirty years of age can form any adequate conception of the public
sentiment and feeling during the days of my young manhood. A man that
was known to be an Abolitionist had better be known to have the plague.
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