ch hot-heads as Spratt were not able, even as
late as 1859, to carry a substantial majority of the South with them in
an attempt to reopen the trade at all hazards, yet the agitation did
succeed in sweeping away nearly all theoretical opposition to the trade,
and left the majority of Southern people in an attitude which regarded
the reopening of the African slave-trade as merely a question of
expediency.

This growth of Southern opinion is clearly to be followed in the
newspapers and pamphlets of the day, in Congress, and in many
significant movements. The Charleston _Standard_ in a series of articles
strongly advocated the reopening of the trade; the Richmond _Examiner_,
though opposing the scheme as a Virginia paper should, was brought to
"acknowledge that the laws which condemn the Slave-trade imply an
aspersion upon the character of the South.[14] In March, 1859, the
_National Era_ said: "There can be no doubt that the idea of reviving
the African Slave Trade is gaining ground in the South. Some two months
ago we could quote strong articles from ultra Southern journals against
the traffic; but of late we have been sorry to observe in the same
journals an ominous silence upon the subject, while the advocates of
'free trade in negroes' are earnest and active."[15] The Savannah
_Republican_, which at first declared the movement to be of no serious
intent, conceded, in 1859, that it was gaining favor, and that
nine-tenths of the Democratic Congressional Convention favored it, and
that even those who did not advocate a revival demanded the abolition of
the laws.[16] A correspondent from South Carolina writes, December 18,
1859: "The nefarious project of opening it [i.e., the slave trade] has
been started here in that prurient temper of the times which manifests
itself in disunion schemes.... My State is strangely and terribly
infected with all this sort of thing.... One feeling that gives a
countenance to the opening of the slave trade is, that it will be a sort
of spite to the North and defiance of their opinions."[17] The New
Orleans _Delta_ declared that those who voted for the slave-trade in
Congress were men "whose names will be honored hereafter for the
unflinching manner in which they stood up for principle, for truth, and
consistency, as well as the vital interests of the South."[18]

85. ~The Question in Congress.~ Early in December, 1856, the subject
reached Congress; and although the agitation was then new, f