n, slavery was a domestic
institution, which each individual State was at liberty to retain or
discard at will, and over which the Federal Government had no control
whatever. Congress would have been no more justified in declaring
that the slaves in Virginia were free men than in demanding that
Russian conspirators should be tried by jury. Nor was the
philanthropy of the Northern people, generally speaking, of an
enthusiastic nature. The majority regarded slavery as a necessary
evil; and, if they deplored the reproach to the Republic, they made
little parade of their sentiments. A large number of Southerners
believed it to be the happiest condition for the African race; but
the best men, especially in the border States, of which Virginia was
the principal, would have welcomed emancipation. But neither
Northerner nor Southerner saw a practicable method of giving freedom
to the negro. Such a measure, if carried out in its entirety, meant
ruin to the South. Cotton and tobacco, the principal and most
lucrative crops, required an immense number of hands, and in those
hands--his negro slaves--the capital of the planter was locked up.
Emancipation would have swept the whole of this capital away.
Compensation, the remedy applied by England to Jamaica and South
Africa, was hardly to be thought of. Instead of twenty millions
sterling, it would have cost four hundred millions. It was doubtful,
too, if compensation would have staved off the ruin of the planters.
The labour of the free negro, naturally indolent and improvident, was
well known to be most inefficient as compared with that of the slave.
For some years, to say the least, after emancipation it would have
been impossible to work the plantations except at a heavy loss.
Moreover, abolition, in the judgment of all who knew him, meant ruin
to the negro. Under the system of the plantations, honesty and
morality were being gradually instilled into the coloured race. But
these virtues had as yet made little progress; the Christianity of
the slaves was but skin-deep; and if all restraint were removed, if
the old ties were broken, and the influence of the planter and his
family should cease to operate, it was only too probable that the
four millions of Africans would relapse into the barbaric vices of
their original condition. The hideous massacres which had followed
emancipation in San Domingo had not yet been forgotten. It is little
wonder, then, that the majority shrank before