rely a
matter of local concern, though it could help itself to the national
money, force the nation into an unjust war, and stain its reputation in
Europe with the buccaneering principles proclaimed in the Ostend
Manifesto. All these were plainly the results of the ever-increasing
and unprovoked aggressions of Northern fanaticism. To be the victims of
such injustice seemed not unpleasing to the South. Let us sum up the
items of their little bill against us. They demanded Missouri,--we
yielded; they could not get along without Texas,--we _re_-annexed it;
they must have a more stringent fugitive-slave law,--we gulped it; they
must no longer be insulted with the Missouri Compromise,--we repealed
it. Thus far the North had surely been faithful to the terms of the
bond. We had paid our pound of flesh whenever it was asked for, and
with fewer wry faces, inasmuch as Brother Ham underwent the incision.
Not at all. We had only surrendered the principles of the Revolution;
we must give up the theory also, if we would be loyal to the
Constitution.

We entirely agree with Mr. Greeley that the quibble which would make
the Constitution an anti-slavery document, because the word _slave_ is
not mentioned in it, cannot stand a moment if we consider the speeches
made in Convention, or the ideas by which the action of its members was
guided. But the question of slavery in the Territories stands on wholly
different ground. We know what the opinions of the men were who drafted
the Constitution, by their own procedure in passing the Ordinance of
1787. That the North should yield all claim to the common lands was
certainly a new interpretation of constitutional law. And yet this was
practically insisted on by the South, and its denial was the more
immediate occasion of rupture between the two sections. But, in our
opinion, the real cause which brought the question to the decision of
war was the habit of concession on the part of the North, and the
inability of its representatives to say _No_, when policy as well as
conscience made it imperative. Without that confidence in Northern
pusillanimity into which the South had been educated by their long
experience of this weakness, whatever might have been the secret wish
of the leading plotters, they would never have dared to rush their
fellow-citizens into a position where further compromise became
impossible.

Inextricably confused with the question of Slavery, and essential to an
understandin