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One of the sensations of the time was a book, dated 1857, which showed a rift in the solid South. It was The Impending Crisis, by Hinton Rowan Helper, a North Carolinian by long descent, birth, and residence; the son of "a merciful slave-holder"; writing at the age of twenty-seven. His standpoint was that of the non-slave-holding Southern white.
The South, retarded in its growth by the employment of slave labor, as compared with the North already exhibited an example of arrested development, and her politicians saw that if the balance of power between the slave-holding and the non-slave-holding States was to be maintained, a wider field for the extension of their favorite institution would have to be provided.
As specimens of "incendiary newspapers and other publications, put forth in the non-slave-holding States," the South Carolina official sent along with his message, copies of the Liberator and of Mr. Garrison's address to the "Free People of Color," for the enlightenment of the members of the Legislature.
On this point the passions and principles of the people of the slave-holding and the majority of the people of the non-slave-holding States came into violent opposition; and there was no possibility that any amendment to the Constitution could be ratified, which would represent either the growth of the Southern people in their ever-increasing belief that negro slavery was not only a good in itself, but a good which ought to be extended, or the growth of the Northern people in their ever-increasing hostility both to slavery and its extension.
It was a stalwart sower, scattering broadcast as he walked over the fields of the then coming generation truths and antipathies of social principles, which were to make peace impossible between the slave-holding and the non-slave-holding halves of the Union.
The violence, intolerence, and tyranny of the South were disgusting many of the most intelligent and influential minds in the non-slave-holding States, and driving them into more or less close affiliation with the anti-slavery movement. And so it was wherever one turned there were conflict and uproar.
Governor Hamilton sent to the South Carolina Legislature in the same month an excited message on the situation. He was in entire accord with the Virginia Executive as to the primary and potent agencies which led to the slave uprising in Virginia. They were "incendiary newspapers and other publications put forth in the non-slave-holding States, and freely circulated within the limits of Virginia."
My opinion is, that the election of Lincoln alone is not sufficient cause for a dissolution of the Union; but that fact, when taken in connection with the avowed objects and intentions of the party whose candidate he is, and the overt acts already committed by that party in nullifying the fugitive-slave law, and the enactment of personal liberty bills in many of the non-slave-holding States, with other acts of like kind, is sufficient cause for dissolving every tie which binds the Southern States to the Union.
No one forfeits his or her character or standing in society by being engaged in holding, buying or selling a slave; the details of which, in all their horror, can scarcely be told. Although the holding of slaves is confined to fifteen of the thirty-one States, yet we hold that the non-slave-holding States are equally guilty with the slave-holding.
The arrangement by which the South was excluded from the upper portion of the Louisiana Territory he came to regard as a cardinal blunder on the part of his section. The fact is that within those two decades the slave-holding had been completely outstripped by the non-slave-holding States in wealth, population, and social growth.
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