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Three questions connected with slavery.
The practical questions connected with that institution in its relations to the
Federal Government which it was supposed might be affected by the accession of
Mr. Lincoln to power were three: The rendition of fugitive slaves escaping to the
Northern States, the prohibition of slavery in the
Territories of the
United States, and interference with slaves in the States by inciting them to insurrection.
It was concerning these three matters, and the relations of the
Federal Government to them, that the angry controversy between political parties in the North and South on the subject of slavery had arisen, and the apprehension that the interests and safety of the people of the slave-holding States would be injuriously affected in these three particulars, by the election of
Mr. Lincoln, was among the reasons alleged in justification of the secession of the cotton States.
In all these matters, as I have said, the border States had a greater and more immediate interest than their Southern neighbors.
More slaves escaped annually from
Virginia and
Kentucky than from all the cotton States combined.
Slave labor was more profitable and slave property most valuable on the cotton, rice, and sugar plantations of the extreme
South, and the emigration of slaves from those States to the remaining territories of the
United States was insignificant.
On the other hand, many slave-holders in the border slave States who were unwilling to encounter the warmer and more enervating climate of the extreme
South might find it to their interest to remove with their slaves to the rich, new Territories of the
West, where the climate and productions resemble those to which they were accustomed.
It was by this class of emigrants that
Kentucky and
Tennessee, and afterwards a great part of
Missouri, had been mainly settled, and many of the same class would doubtless have removed further West with the advance of population in that direction.
To these people the exclusion of slavery from the
Territories was a real grievance, while it would probably have benefitted the people of the cotton States by increasing the emigration of slaves to those States and reducing the cost of that kind of labor.
As to interference with slavery in the States and inciting them to insurrection, the border slave States served as a protection to their Southern neighbors and were much more exposed to this appalling peril than they.
Indeed,
Virginia had recently been the scene of an attempt to incite insurrection among her slaves; an attempt, by the
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way, which
Mr. Lincoln and the Republican party of his day denounced as ‘the gravest of crimes.’
If the considerations to which I have referred were entitled to have any influence in determining the policy of the
Southern States because of
Mr. Lincoln's election, that influence should have been most strongly felt in the border States, where the danger of mischief was greater, and yet these were the States that adhered most steadfastly to the
Union.
This fact tends strongly to show the difference of opinion between the people of the cotton and of the border slave States, and serves to illustrate the sincerity of the attachment of the latter to the
Union.
I have thus endeavored to show you how matters stood before the 15th of April, 1861, and to point out the important fact so essential to a correct understanding of the history of that eventful period, and yet so constantly overlooked, disregarded, or misrepresented, that with reference to a dissolution of the
Union for any cause existing before the 15th of April, the difference between the people of the border States and those of the cotton States was as clearly marked as the difference between the North and South had been before the election of
Mr. Lincoln.
