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There were also plans for foreign conquest in slavery's behalf, which received countenance from public and even from national authorities. The idea seemed to be that the victory and territorial enlargement consequent upon the Mexican War might be repeated in Central America and Cuba.
Who had taught him that self-control, self-sacrifice, are attributes that make men masters of the earth and lift them nearer heaven? Should I have urged the beauty of forgiveness, the duty of devout submission? He had no religion, for he was no saintly "Uncle Tom," and Slavery's black shadow seemed to darken all the world to him and shut out God.
And many dream withal the hour is nigh That gives them back their father's heritage: For foreign arms and aid they fondly sigh, Nor solely dare encounter hostile rage, Or tear their name defiled from Slavery's mournful page. Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not Who would be free themselves must strike the blow? By their right arms the conquest must be wrought? Will Gaul or Muscovite redress thee? No!
We marched on through the woods, with no sound but the peeping of the frogs in a neighboring marsh, and the occasional yelping of a dog, as we passed the hut of some "cracker." This yelping always made Corporal Sutton uneasy; dogs are the detective officers of Slavery's police. We had halted once or twice to close up the ranks, and had marched some two miles, seeing and hearing nothing more.
In Lincoln's mind, slavery being the main issue, this "dominion" issue was incidental a mere outgrowth of slavery that should begin to pass away with slavery's restriction. In the Southern mind, a community consciousness, the determination to be a people by themselves, nation within the nation, was the issue, and slavery was the incident.
The dark schemes of slavery's lord-like statesmen have swept these vast areas into our map. The plotters have ignored the future colossal returns of gold, silver, copper, and lead. Not an American has yet caught the real value of the world's most extensive forests of pine and redwood. They clothe these western slopes with graceful, unmutilated pageantry of green.
If the Dred Scott decision had been promulgated by our highest court, and the slaveholders had insisted upon the license it was intended to give them for taking their slave property into free territory, at the time that Garrison was being dragged by a mob through Boston's streets; when Birney's printing-press in Cincinnati was being tumbled into the Ohio River; when Pennsylvania Hall, the Quaker Abolitionists' forty-thousand-dollar construction, was ablaze in Philadelphia; when Lovejoy, the Abolition martyr, was bleeding out his life in one of the streets of Alton, Illinois when, in fact, the whole land was swayed by a frenzied hatred of the men and women who dared to question slavery's right to supremacy, the writer believes the movement would have been successful.
As the war went on the conviction grew that peace would never be safe or permanent if slavery remained, and that the suppression of the Rebellion was postponed, jeopardized, and made costlier by every hour of slavery's life.
Was it for slavery's added domains these glorious lands were destined? Maxime is only a pawn in that great game of which the annexation of Texas, the Mexican War, and California conquest are moves. Wise, subtle, far-seeing, and not over-scrupulous, the leaders of southern sentiment, with prophetic alarm, were seeking to neutralize free-State extension in the Northwest.
It is not Bacchus's only, but Slavery's "black servant, negro fine," and belongs, after all, to that Africa which he says "breeds no such prodigious poison." The Union lovers of "the Great Plant" may be called to decide between their country and their cigar. Will patriotism or the pipe then prevail? We tremble for our country in that conflict of duty and desire.
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