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Garrison's bitter taunt that "the Union is but another name for the iron reign of the slave-power," was driven home to the North, by the Dred Scott decision, with the logic of another unanswerable fact.
Acknowledging what has been so diligently harped upon, that the motive of the war is not the overthrow of the slave-power, he still insists that Slavery is the cause of the war. This he attempts to establish historically and economically; nor does he leave the subject without a searching look into Southern society and a prospective glance at the issues of the contest.
This he did, adding, by way of caution, this timely counsel: "Let nothing be done at this solemn crisis needlessly to check or divert the mighty current of popular feeling which is now sweeping southward with the strength and impetuosity of a thousand Niagaras, in direct conflict with that haughty and perfidious slave-power which has so long ruled the republic with a rod of iron, for its own base and satanic purposes."
"The struggle of Douglas with the slave-power will be a magnificent spectacle to witness," wrote one who had hitherto evinced little admiration for the author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Douglas kept himself well in hand throughout his speech. His manner was at times defiant, but his language was restrained.
His father's business in life was to get past the dangers of the slave-power, or to fix its bounds at least. The task done, he might be content to let his sons pay for the pilotage; and it mattered little to his success whether they paid it with their lives wasted on battle-fields or in misdirected energies and lost opportunity.
"Sir, I can only say that, in my judgment, we are to use the first, the last, and every occasion which occurs, in maintaining our sentiments against the extension of the slave-power." In the following winter Mr. Webster continued his policy of opposition to all acquisitions of territory.
It was a species of assisted emigration which was new in the history of American colonization, outside the annals of missionary effort. The chief promoter of this enterprise was a thrifty, Massachusetts Yankee, who saw no reason why crusading and business should not go hand in hand. Kansas might be wrested from the slave-power at the same time that returns on invested funds were secured.
Then came the War with Mexico; the attempt by means of the Wilmot proviso to check the growing territorial-greed and rapacity of the Slave-power; and the acquisition by the United States, of California and New Mexico, under the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, which brought Peace.
It had risen well above the zero point in politics. It was gaining numbers and it was gaining votes. A new element had appeared at the polls and both of the old parties began to exhibit a certain degree of impressibility to the latest attraction. The slave-power with quick instinct recognized in the new comer a dangerous rival, and schemed for its destruction.
Such was Massachusetts's answer to the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise, and a triumphant slave-power. Its instant effect was to accelerate in the South the action of the disunion working forces there, to hurry the inevitable moment when the two sections would rush together in a death-grapple within or without Webster's once glorious Union.
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