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Updated: June 22, 2025
Rising from humble beginnings, he was animated by the most intense dislike of the "slavocracy," as he called the political aristocracy of the South. Like many other American leaders he was proud of his humble origin, but unlike many others he never sloughed off his backwoods crudeness. He continually boasted of himself and vilified the aristocrats, who in return treated him badly.
Henry Clay's proposal of 1849 to provide for gradual emancipation in Kentucky was bitterly resented. It had long been an axiom with the slavocracy that the institution would perish unless it had the opportunity to expand.
Elated by its victory in 1850, and also by that of 1852, when the anti-slavery sentiment of northern Whigs drove so many of their old southern allies to vote for Pierce, giving him his triumphant election, the slavocracy in 1854 proceeded in its work of suicide to undo the sacred Missouri Compromise of 1820.
It is in the light of this motive that the desire of the South for the annexation of Cuba and of Texas, even at the expense of a war with Mexico, is to be interpreted. The compromise of 1820 satisfied the demands of the slavocracy for a time, but only for a time. In 1850 the South again demanded, and obtained concessions.
But it is plain that we can strike lower than the blossom; and it is also plain that we must, as practical men, devise some method by which the existence of the Slavocracy as a political power may be annihilated.
Even if we grant martial intrepidity to the members of the Slavocracy, the present war proves that the system of Slavery is not one which develops martial virtues among the "free whites" it has cajoled or forced into its hateful service. Indeed, the armies of Jefferson Davis are weak on the same principle on which the slave-system is weak.
"A money power is fast growing up in this country which will rule the country so thoroughly that the small dictation of the cotton industry of the South will not be a comparison. Slavocracy is only one of the scales on the tail of the dragon of plutocracy. Gold and silver, tariffs, subsidies, colonies, banks of issue these are the claws and teeth of the big slavery."
She seceded from Mexico and declared her independence now; and General Houston, a Virginian by birth, a Tennesseean by residence, had taken command of the Texas troops, and after the Alamo massacre, had defeated the Mexicans with terrible slaughter in the battle of San Jacinto. The New England conscience excoriated these things and attributed them to the machinations of the slavocracy.
Such may possibly be the fact, but as sane men we cannot but disbelieve it. Our conviction is, that, whether the war is ended in three months or in twelve months, the Slave Power is sure to be undermined or overthrown. The sooner the war is ended, the more favorable will be the terms granted to the Slavocracy; but no terms will be granted which do not look to its extinction.
Yet men were in power because of him. A Whig had been elected President upon a war record of a fight for Texas. Who wished to part with Texas, New Mexico, California, or Oregon? If Douglas had the slavocracy back of him and catered to it, he did not have plutocracy back of him. If he had been a demagogue he would have done the bidding of some faction. He did the bidding of no faction.
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