Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1

4th. The census shows that the Border States are pushing their slaves South. Fear of their free Northern neighbors will quicken the process, and so widen the breach between Gulf and Border States by making one constantly more and the other less Slave States. Free trade in sugar bankrupts Louisiana. Free trade in men bankrupts Virginia. Free trade generally lets two thirds of the direct taxation rest on the numerous, richer, and more comfortable whites of the Border States; hence further conflict. Such a despotism, with every third man black and a foe, will make no wars.

Why should it attack us? We are not a cannon thundering at its gates. We are not an avalanche overhanging its sunny vales. Our influence, that of freedom, is only the air, penetrating everywhere; like heat, permeating all space. The South cannot stand isolated on a glass cricket. The sun will heat her, and electricity convulse. She must outwit ideas before she can get rid of them. A fevered child in July might as well strike at the sun, as the South attack us for that, the only annoyance we can give her,--the sight and influence of our nobler civilization.

Disunion is gain. I venture the assertion, in the face of State Street, that of any five Northern men engaged in Southern trade, exclusively, four will end in bankruptcy. If disunion sifts such commerce, the North will lose nothing.

I venture the assertion, that seven at least of the Southern States receive from the government more than they contribute to it. So far, their place will be more profitable than their company.

The whole matter of the Southern trade has been grossly exaggerated, as well as the importance of the Mississippi River. Freedom makes her own rivers of iron. Facts show that for one dollar the West sends or brings by the