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its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend.”
But these and other facts, essential to a correct understanding of the issue, were studiously concealed from the people, or so adroitly shrouded in sophistry that they were kept far away from popular cognizance.
During the canvass preceding the election, the conspirators, and the politicians in their train, employed all the means in their power to excite intensely every blinding passion of the slaveholders and the masses of the people.
They appealed to their fears, their prejudices, their local patriotism, and their greed.
They asserted, with all the solemn seeming of sober truth, that the people of the Free-labor States, grown rich and powerful through robbery of the people of the Slave-labor States, by means of tariff laws and other governmental measures, and by immigration from foreign lands, had elected a sectional President for the purpose of carrying out a long-cherished scheme of ambition, namely, the political and social subjugation of the inhabitants of the Slave-labor States; the subversion of their system of labor; the elevation of the negro to social equality with the white man; and the destruction of Slavery, upon which, they alleged, had rested in the past, and must forever rest in the future, all substantial prosperity in the cotton-growing States.
They held the Republican party responsible for John Brown's acts at Harper's Ferry,1 and declared that his raid was the forerunner of a general and destructive invasion of the Slavelabor States by “the fanatical hordes of the North.”
They cited the publications and speeches of the Abolitionists of the North during the past thirty years; the legislation in the same section unfriendly to slavery; and the more recent utterances of leading members of the Republican party, in which it had been declared that “there is an irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery” --“the Republic cannot exist half slave and half free” --“freedom is the normal condition of all territory,” &c.; they cited these with force, as proofs of long and earnest preparation for a now impending war upon “the South” and its institutions.
They pictured, in high coloring, the dreadful paralysis of all the industry and commerce of “the South,” and the utter extinguishment of all hopes of future advancement in art, science, literature, and the development of the yet hidden resources in the region below the Susquehanna, the Potomac, and the Ohio, as a consequence of the domination in the National Government of their “bitter enemies,” as they unjustly termed the people of the Free-labor States.2
In this unholy work, the press and the pulpit became powerful auxiliaries.
1 For the purpose of liberating the slaves of Virginia, John Brown, an enthusiast, with a few followers, seized Harper's Ferry, at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers, in October, 1859, as a base. of operations. He failed. He was arrested by National and Virginia troops, and was hanged, in December following, by the authorities of Virginia.
2 This false teaching was not new. It was begun by John C. Calhoun, and had been kept up ever since. It was so in Madison's later days. In a letter to Henry Clay, cited by Dr. Sargeant, in his admirable pamphlet, entitled, England, the United States, and the Southern Confederacy, that statesman and patriot said:--“It is painful to see the unceasing efforts made to alarm the South, by imputations against the North of unconstitutional designs on the subject of Slavery.” Madison and Clay were both slaveholders. Again, the former wrote: “The inculcated impression of a permanent incompatibility of interests between the North and the South may put it in the power of popular leaders, aspiring to the highest stations, to unite the South on some critical occasion. In pursuing this course, the first and most obvious step is nullification, the next secession, and the last, a final separation.”
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