ords and thrash them! The South is growing rich and powerful."

Lee lifted his hand in a quick gesture of protest.

"A popular delusion, my friend. Under Slave labor the South is growing
poorer daily. While the Northern States, under the wage system, ten
times more efficient, are draining the blood and treasure of Europe and
growing richer by leaps and bounds. Norfolk, Richmond and Charleston
should have been the great cities of the Eastern Seaboard. They are as
yet unimportant towns in the world commerce. Boston, Philadelphia and
New York have become the centers of our business life, of our trade, our
culture, our national power. While slavery is scratching the surface of
our soil with old-fashioned plows, while we quit work at twelve o'clock
every Saturday, spend our Sundays at church, and set two negroes to
help one do nothing Monday morning, the North is sweeping onward in the
science of agriculture. While they invent machines which double their
crops, cut their labor down a hundred per cent, we are fighting for new
lands in the West to exhaust by our primitive methods. The treasures of
the earth yet lie in our mines untouched by pick or spade. Our forests
stand unbroken--vast reaches of wilderness. The slave is slow and
wasteful. Wage labor, quick, efficient. Our chief industry is the
breeding of a race of feverish politicians."

"You know, Colonel Lee, as well as I do that Slavery in the South has
been a blessing to the negro."

Lee moved his head in quick assent.

"I admit that Slavery took the negro from the jungle, from a slavery the
most cruel known to human history, that it has taught him the use of
tools, the science of agriculture, the worship of God, the first lessons
in the alphabet of humanity. But unless we can now close this school, my
friend, somebody is going to try to divide this Union some day--"

Ruffin struck his hands together savagely.

"The quicker the better, I say! If the children of the men who created
this republic are denied equal rights under its laws and in its
Territories, then I say, to your tents, oh, Israel!"

"And do you know what that may mean?"

"A Southern and a Northern Nation. Let them come!"

"The States have been knit together slowly, but inevitably by steam and
electricity. I can conceive of no greater tragedy than an attempt to-day
to divide them."

"I can conceive of no greater blessing!" Ruffin fairly shouted.

"So William Lloyd Garrison, the leader of Aboli