Isaac N. Arnold

“ The antagonism between freedom and slavery has never been more strikingly exhibited than in the United States. From the beginning, slavery was the only serious cause of division in the republic. The people of our country were substantially one. They had to a great extent a common lineage, the same religion, literature, laws, and history. That portion of the earth known as the United States is adapted by its physical conformation to be the home of one great national family, and not of many. Without slavery the people would naturally have gravitated into one homogeneous nation. ”

“ As a free state, the route of free labor, of pioneer colonization, would have passed up the valleys of the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Arkansas, to all the West, and to Northern Texas. As a slave state, free labor was crowded far to the North and West. By this success, the slave holders secured in the great state of Missouri, a most commanding position in the very center of the republic. From that time until 1860, the control of slavery over the National Government was substantially absolute. ”

“ Each free state had its great popular leaders, and the people turned out in vast numbers to listen to eloquence, inspired by all the fervor and poetry of liberty, and the wrongs and cruelties of slavery. ”

“ President Garfield, in Congress in 1865, speaking on the joint resolution to abolish and prohibit slavery forever throughout the republic, and alluding to the power of slavery, exclaimed: "Many mighty men have been slain by her, and many proud ones have humbled themselves at her feet. All along the coast of the political sea they lie like stranded wrecks, broken on the headlands of freedom."
Unable to accomplish the annexation by treaty, the leaders of the slavery party finally, in 1845, carried it by joint resolution of both houses of Congress. ”

“ Nearly all the brightest intellects of the South were absorbed in politics, while in the free states, they were engaged in all the varied pursuits of civilization. They were inventing labor-saving machinery, producing the steam engine, the cotton gin, the telegraph, the reaping machine, opening canals and constructing railways, rivaling the world in ship building, creating a national literature and schools of art, and competing successfully with Europe in the products of skilled labor, in learning, in science, and in the fine arts. ”

“ While in the free states, the outrages of mobs and the various persecutions to which the anti-slavery men were subjected, served only rapidly to add to their strength, in the slave states, liberty of the press and freedom of speech were subject to every outrage, and the laws furnished neither protection nor redress. ”

“ And simultaneously with these, there grew up in the North a strong cotton manufacturing interest hostile to any interference with slavery. Knowing their own weakness, feeling the insecurity of property founded upon wrong and injustice, the slaveholders, relatively few in numbers, combined and united into a compact, active, bold, unscrupulous, and determined political power. They became skillful politicians. They selected their ablest men for leaders, and kept them in office and power. They carefully educated their most talented young men for public life. ”

“ The fathers of the revolution tolerated slavery as a temporary evil, which they justly regarded as incompatible with the principles of liberty embraced in the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States. ”

“ The vigilant and sagacious leaders of the slave power began carefully and systematically to strengthen and entrench. In 1790, Congress accepted from North Carolina the territory now constituting the state of Tennessee, upon condition that so much of the ordinance of 1787 as forbade slavery should not be applied to it, and that no regulation should be made by Congress for the emancipation of slaves. This was followed, in 1796, by the admission of Tennessee into the Union as a slave state. ”

“ Meanwhile the whig and democratic leaders, alarmed by the rapid growth of this new and vigorous party, undertook again to settle the slavery question by compromise. When Congress met in December, 1849, the slavery issue confronted its members. The United States had acquired from Mexico, Upper and Lower California and New Mexico. The Wilmot proviso excluding slavery had twice passed the House of Representatives, but had been as often rejected by the Senate. The slave power had secured a cession of the territory, but the extension of slavery into it was not yet secure. ”

“ A powerful cotton and slave aristocracy was with consummate skill soon organized, and, with an immense property invested in lands and negroes, soon dominated over the cotton states, and by and by in its arrogance proclaimed "Cotton is King." ”

“ General Washington, in a letter to Robert Morris, speaking of slavery, says: "There is not a man living, who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it." In 1787, Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush, both signers of the Declaration of Independence, were president and secretary of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. In 1787, a society was formed in New York, of which John Jay, who had presided over the Continental Congress, was president, "for promoting the manumission of slaves." ”

“ These measures, by a combination of the leaders of both great parties, were finally forced through Congress. Mr. Webster made them the occasion of his celebrated 7th of March speech, and now the leaders said: "There shall be no more agitation, these measures are a finality, and we will have peace," and they drew up and signed a paper declaring this, and pledging one another to oppose any man who should not so regard them. But they soon learned that the conflict between slavery and freedom was irrepressible, inevitable, and must go on until one or the other should triumph. ”

“ The abolition societies, which not long after the organization of the government were very generally formed, and embraced among their members the most prominent and influential citizens, gradually disappeared, while the religious organizations ceased to protest against slavery, and many of them went so far as to give the institution their sanction and support. ”

“ They selected their best men, trained them for, and kept them permanently in public life, while in the North, a custom of rotation in office, kept many of the ablest men out of public life, and if elected, they did not remain long enough to acquire the practical skill and experience necessary to govern a great nation. ”