itself placed providentially as an obstacle between the United
States and the countries of which it lately meditated the acquisition.
The United States will have the advantage of being unable even to think
of Cuba, or Central America, or Mexico; they will be delivered for a
time from these baleful temptations, and from the States in which they
met the warmest support. And, during this time, the extreme South will
be forced, in some sort, to look at the problem of slavery under an
aspect before unknown to it.

Later will come the shock, the postponed but inevitable conflict.
Blockaded at the South, blockaded at the North, blockaded on the African
side, undermined and torn by its intestine divisions, the extreme South
will have to face, at one time or another, the irresistible power of the
United States. Does any one imagine by chance that the latter will
forever relinquish New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico? The more they
become elevated and strengthened, the more they will be led, say rather,
forced, to absorb again the portions of their former domain which have
attempted to exist without them.

From this time, the discussion relative to slavery will assume in the
United States a simple and decided bearing. The extreme South, in
quitting them, will have given them every facility; it will have endowed
them with political homogeneousness and liberal majorities. By the mere
effect of the departure of the senators and representatives of the
extreme South, the party opposed to slavery will have acquired, at the
outset, the numerical majority which it lacked in Congress; it will be
in a position to ensure the passage of its bills, to form its
administration, to constitute by degrees courts in every respect
favorable to its principles. Next, the border States who shall not have
followed the fortunes of the extreme South will find themselves bound to
those of the North, associated with its interests, open to its ideas;
and it is a fixed fact that several will not be long in completing the
work of liberty already begun among them, and thus becoming, with their
rich and extensive Territories, of the number of those fortunate States
in which the suppression of slavery gives the signal for the fruitful
invasion of immigrants, for agricultural progress, for wealth, and for
credit. In this manner the "patriarchal institution" will disappear
peaceably from the intermediate region, while it will be threatened by
more terrible shocks i