lieve in the fundamental principle on which the
government is based, and the other half deny it, and yet the government
go on harmoniously, wielding its powers acceptably and safely to all.
This is the error. Our failure is not in the plan of government; the
error is not that our fathers supposed that a government could be based
and permanently sustained upon slavery and freedom advancing _pari
passu_. They indulged in no such delusion. The error is modern. When
slavery demanded concessions, and freedom yielded; when slavery
suggested compromises, and freedom accepted them; when slavery,
unrebuked, claimed equal rights under the constitution, and freedom
acknowledged the justice of the claim,--then came the test whether the
government itself should be administered in the service of slavery or in
behalf of freedom. Two considerations influenced the slaveholders.
First, even should they be permitted to wield the government, they
foresaw that its provisions were inadequate to meet the exigencies of
slavery. No despotism can be sustained by the voluntary efforts of its
subjects. Slavery is a despotism; and as such can only be supported by
power independent of that of the slaves themselves, and always
sufficient for their control. The slaves were yearly increasing in
numbers and gaining in knowledge. These changes indicated the near
approach of the time when the slaves of the South would reenact the
scenes of St. Domingo. The plantations of the cotton region are remote
from each other, and the proportion of slaves on a single plantation is
often as many as fifty for every free person, The sale of negroes from
the northern slave States has introduced an element upon the plantations
at once intelligent and hostile, and, of course, dangerous, The time
must come when the white populations of plantations, districts, or
States even, would disappear in a single night, In such a moment of
terror and massacre how, and to what extent, would the United States
government, acting under the constitution, afford protection, aid, or
even secure a barren vengeance? These were grave questions, and admitted
only of an unsatisfactory answer at best. The government has power to
put down insurrections; but for what good would a body of troops be
marched to a scene of desolation and blood a fortnight or a month after
the servile outbreak had done its work? These considerations controlled
the intelligent minds of the South, and they were driven irres