cannot now destroy their
efficient cause.

[Footnote v: Nor would these be the only difficulties attendant upon
the undertaking; if the Union undertook to buy up the negroes now in
America, in order to transport them to Africa, the price of slaves,
increasing with their scarcity, would soon become enormous; and the
States of the North would never consent to expend such great sums for a
purpose which would procure such small advantages to themselves. If the
Union took possession of the slaves in the Southern States by force, or
at a rate determined by law, an insurmountable resistance would arise in
that part of the country. Both alternatives are equally impossible.]

[Footnote w: In 1830 there were in the United States 2,010,327 slaves
and 319,439 free blacks, in all 2,329,766 negroes: which formed about
one-fifth of the total population of the United States at that time.]

I am obliged to confess that I do not regard the abolition of slavery
as a means of warding off the struggle of the two races in the United
States. The negroes may long remain slaves without complaining; but if
they are once raised to the level of free men, they will soon revolt at
being deprived of all their civil rights; and as they cannot become the
equals of the whites, they will speedily declare themselves as enemies.
In the North everything contributed to facilitate the emancipation of
the slaves; and slavery was abolished, without placing the free negroes
in a position which could become formidable, since their number was too
small for them ever to claim the exercise of their rights. But such is
not the case in the South. The question of slavery was a question of
commerce and manufacture for the slave-owners in the North; for those of
the South, it is a question of life and death. God forbid that I should
seek to justify the principle of negro slavery, as has been done by
some American writers! But I only observe that all the countries which
formerly adopted that execrable principle are not equally able to
abandon it at the present time.

When I contemplate the condition of the South, I can only discover two
alternatives which may be adopted by the white inhabitants of those
States; viz., either to emancipate the negroes, and to intermingle
with them; or, remaining isolated from them, to keep them in a state of
slavery as long as possible. All intermediate measures seem to me likely
to terminate, and that shortly, in the most horrible of ci