James Blaine

The one involved the highest moral considerations, the other was governed solely by expediency.

The same considerations produced a directly opposite conclusion in the South, where those interest in slave labor could not afford to build up a class of free laborers with high wages and independent opinions.

Zeal against slavery was necessarily accompanied by an appreciation of the dignity of free labor; and free labor was more generously remunerated under the stimulus of protective laws.

Anti-slavery zeal and a tariff for protection went hand in hand in New England, while pro-slavery principles became nearly identical with free-trade in the Cotton States.

The division upon the tariff was never so accurately defined by geographical lines as was the division upon slavery; but the aggressive elements on each side of both questions finally coalesced in the same States, North and South.

They would not realize that the contest they were rashly inviting was not alone with the anti-slavery men of the free States, not alone with the spirit of loyalty to the Republic, but that it carried with it a challenge to the progress of…

They disregarded the enlightened philanthropy and the awakened conscience which had abolished slavery in every other Republic of America, which had thrown the protection of law over the helpless millions of India, which had moved even the…

But for the constant presence of national power, and its constant exercise under the provisions of the Constitution, the South would have had no protection against the anti-slavery assaults of the civilized world.

The long contest they had been waging with the anti-slavery men of the free States had blinded Southern zealots to the essential strength of their position so long as their States continued to be members of the Federal Union.

In the passions aroused by the agitation over slavery, Southern men failed to see (what in cooler moments they could readily perceive) that the existence of the Union and the guaranties of the Constitution were the shield and safeguard of…

In the more northern of the slave-holding States, free labor was more profitable, and hence the interest in Slavery was not so vital or so enduring as in the extreme South.

The revival of the African slave-trade was the last suggestion for its protection, and was the immediate precursor of its destruction.

The financial interest at stake in the fate of the institution was so vast, that Southern men felt impelled to seek every possible safeguard against the innumerable dangers which surrounded it.

This affords a measure of the importance which pro-slavery statesmen attached to the position of the Supreme Court.

It is worthy of observation that the re-opening of the African slave-trade was not proposed in the South until after the Dred Scott decision.

The thirty thousand slaves annually taken from the border States to the cotton-belt represented so great an aggregation of misery, that the men engaged in conducting it were, even by the better class of slave-holders, regarded with…

In the history of the world there has perhaps never been so vast an amount of productive capital firmly consolidated under one power, subject to the ultimate control and direction of so small a number of men.

With the labor of the slave, they could produce three hundred millions a year in excess of the food required for the population.

Without slave-labor, the cotton, rice, and sugar lands were, in the view of Southern men, absolutely valueless.

Estimated by its capacity to produce wealth, the institution of Slavery represented to the white population of the South a sum vastly in excess of two thousand millions.

The investment of the South in slaves represented a capital of two thousand millions of dollars, reckoned only upon the salable value of the chattel.

They saw that they could control the product and regulate the price of a staple in constant demand among every people on the globe.

If the institution of Slavery could be rendered secure, the dominant minds of the South saw political power and boundless wealth within their grasp.

The American wits and critics of that day did not fail to note the significance of the date, and to appreciate the statesmanship and philosophy which led the British Parliament to terminate the trade at the precise moment when the American…

American slave-holders were urging the abolition of the traffic while London merchants were using every effort to continue it, and while Bristol, the very headquarters of the trade, was represented in Parliament by Edmund Burke.