A foremost Union
leader in the antecedent debate, upon the advent of actual war he had
reluctantly but resolutely gone with his state and section.
V
The intractable Abolitionists of the North and the radical Secessionists of
the South have much historically to answer for. The racial warp and woof in
the United States were at the outset of our national being substantially
homogeneous. That the country should have been geographically divided and
sectionally set by the ears over the institution of African slavery was
the work of agitation that might have attained its ends by less costly
agencies.
How often human nature seeking its bent prefers the crooked to the straight
way ahead! The North, having in its ships brought the negroes from Africa
and sold them to the planters of the South, putting the money it got for
them in its pocket, turned philanthropist. The South, having bought its
slaves from the slave traders of the North under the belief that slave
labor was requisite to the profitable production of sugar, rice and cotton,
stood by property-rights lawfully acquired, recognized and guaranteed by
the Constitution. Thence arose an irrepressible conflict of economic forces
and moral ideas whose doubtful adjustment was scarcely worth what it cost
the two sections in treasure and blood.
On the Northern side the issue was made to read freedom, on the Southern
side, self-defense. Neither side had any sure law to coerce the other.
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