pro while colonists to assume. They were virtually constituted an oligarchy in the bosom of the republic, united in action by a common interest, and enabled by their position to devote themselves to political life. At the North the majority of able and educated men found in the opportunities afforded by the rapid and amazing development of the resources of their country abundant reasons for turning their energies in a hundred various directions. They became lawyers, engineers, merchants, manufacturers, men of letters-they engaged in all the pursuits which multiply upon mankind in the gressive life of modern civilization. The governmental machinery of the Northern States in the main worked so well and so easily, that there was little to call for the devotion of great abilities to the affairs of the State. Political life at the North grew less and less attractive to men of powerful intellect, high character, and noble ambition. Political life at the South, on the contrary, tended to monopolize more and more the activity of the prosperous planting classes. For while the North conceived the great objects of American political life to have been gained, and so were securely confident for the future, the South soon conceived a project difficult of fulfilment, and concentrated its energies for the realization of an uncertain future. Slavery, which had already begun to decay throughout the South at the epoch of the Revolution, suddenly revived within a few years after the adoption of the Constitution. Almost simultaneously with the development of the cotton manufacture in England, the discovery was made that the southern portion of the North American continent was, of all the countries in the world, the best adapted for the growth of cotton; and this discovery was naturally followed by the planting of cotton over all the sea-board slave territory of the Union. The gangs of negroes whom the planters of Carolina and Georgia had almost begun to regard as locusts, devouring the soil, were instantaneously converted into machines of immense value for the production of a staple, of which the supply, let it increase as rapidly as it might, could not 615 keep pace with the growing demand for it. The notion of emancipation rapidly began to fade out of the Southern mind, and gave place to other thoughts. How to secure room for the expansion of slavery, soon became the first care of Southern politicians. For, as all sagacious observers of the operation of the system of slavery have demonstrated, the profitable employment of slavelabour is inconsistent with the deve lopment of agricultural science, and demands a continual supply of new and unexhausted soil. The slaveholder, investing his capital in the purchase of the labourers themselves, and not, as here, merely in soil and machines, paying his free labourers out of his profit, must depend for his continued and progressive prosperity upon the cheapness and facility with which he can transfer his slaves to fresh and fertile lands. An enormous additional item, viz., the price of slaves, being added to the cost of production, all other elements of that cost require to be proportionally smaller, or profits fail. Within the limits of the Union, as established by the Peace of 1783, the slaveholding interest was hampered by a restriction adopted in 1789 by the American Congress, and known in American history as the NorthWestern Ordinance. By the provisions of this ordinance, slavery had been confined to so much of the American territory as lay south of the river Ohio. Over against the American dominions, along the valley of the Mississippi, and the shores of the Gulf, lay the magnificent south-western possessions of Spain. These possessions passed into the hands of France during the con vulsions which followed the great French Revolution; and in the general confusion and embroilment of the nations, the idea suggested itself to the Southern leaders, of negotiating with the First Consul of France for the transfer to America of the great territory of Louisiana. The acquisition of this territory was to be but the inauguration of a new American policy, of which the object should be, not the restriction, but the indefinite extension of slavery. The mere conception of such a policy, so utterly at variance as it was with the original ideas of those who founded the American was produced by it only in the minds the Presidential authority has been At Through now fifty years the Southern political leaders have relentlessly and victoriously pursued their object of securing an unlimited area for the extension of slavery. While the wiseacres of the North have been repeating the traditional language of the early Republican days, and assuring mankind that slavery in America was a limited and languishing entity which would long since have vanished from off the face of the earth, had not the slaveholders been inflamed into a passionate disregard of all their own interests by the injudicious attacks 1856.] Claims of the Southerners to superiority. of intemperate abolitionists-while we in England, marking only the marvellous increase of the prosperity of America, and familiar with America only through her commerce, and of late through her literature, have been supposing that the life of power in America dwelt in those great Northern communities in which commerce and literature mainly flourish-through all this time the South has been steadily advancing, a serried phalanx, to the accomplishment of the purpose which it conceived so long ago. Slavery continually extended over new soils has been continually profitable, and the slaveholders of the South, flown with continual success, have borne themselves as nobles in the Republic. One needs but to look through the lighter literature of America, to be satisfied that the position of the slaveholding class in the United States has been as nearly as possible analogous to that of the patricians in the Rome of the Gracchi. The tall, graceful, lordly, dark-eyed, and haughty Southerner' has been the hero worshipped in the boarding schools and the milliners' shops of America, as is the young lord' in those of Britain. The name 'Yankee,' which we in Europe apply to all Americans indiscriminately, has in America a local application to the citizens of the Northern States, and is never used by the Southron, in speaking of his countrymen, save as a term of contempt and opprobrium. It would be difficult to show that in the present existing type of the Southern gentleman' there is any intrinsic justification to be found of the common Southern assumption of superior breeding, style, and blood. The Southern planters, as a body-so far, at least, as acquaintance with them extends (and it has not been inconsiderable) -certainly do not surpass, if they so much as equal, the professional men and the merchants of the North, in any of the personal elements of distinction. Neither in manners, in morals, nor in mind, need the active communities of the North fear a comparison with the self-indulgent populations of the South. We doubt, indeed, if, from the records of cri minal proceedings in all the Northern States, an instance could be culled our 617 of conduct so foul and degrading, perpetrated by a man of decent standing, as that of which Mr. Brooks, of South Carolina, was guilty in his attack upon Senator Sumner. And we are sure that it would be impossible to find a Northern community so lost to all sense of shame and of manly honour as the population must have been which endorsed that ruffianly act by returning the criminal to the Congress from which he had been virtually expelied. For what are the facts of that case, as testified by the guilty parties themselves? A Northern Senator utters some stinging observations upon the behaviour of South Carolina during the Revolutionary War, and makes some sharp replies to very abusive attacks which had been made upon himself by a Senator from that State. Several days after the delivery of the speech in the course of which these observations and replies were made, a member of the other House of Congress resolves to exact personal satisfaction from the speaker-and this on the ground that offence had been given to himself as a citizen of South Carolina, and as a nephew of the South Carolinian Senator to whom Mr. Sumner had replied. Having come to this resolution, our Member takes counsel with two personal friends as to the means of putting it into execution. His own intention is to meet the Northern Senator in the street, and call him there to account. But this intention is disapproved by his friends. Beware,' they say to him, Sumner is a larger man than yourself, and a more powerful man. Moreover, we understand that he is a capital pugilist. If you should attack him in the street, you might come off second best, and that would be a sad thing indeed!' Our chivalrous defender of South Carolinian honour is struck by the force of these arguments, and exhibits a quick and graceful apprehension of their practical good sense, which would have done honour to Falstaff himself. I will assail him on the Capitol steps,' he then proposes, 'where I might take up a good position and fall upon the unsuspicious Senator from above, as the Swiss at Morgarten fell upon the Austrians.' But the sagacious friends of this reckless knight know a trick worth two of that. This The Capitol steps are not so numerous, nor so steep,' they suggest, that a vigorous man like Sumner should lose his wind' in mounting them, and he might give you trouble, even when caught at such disadvantage. Your true plan of campaign is this. Boldly enter the Senate House after the adjournment; wait patiently and bravely till all the personal friends of Mr. Sumner shall have left the Hall, and then, while he is seated at his desk, engaged in writing, and wholly unconscious of your presence, approach him, suddenly address him, and ere he can recover from the surprise of your appearance, smite him upon the head.' plan the hero of South Carolina adopted and carried out to the letter. Let not our readers suppose that we have exaggerated the facts of the case, or drawn upon our imagination for the counsels of Mr. Brooks's comforters. We have mitigated, in some details, the published avowals, made with pomp and conscious pride, by the two individuals who aided and abetted Mr. Brooks in this cowardly felony. And we repeat the assertion of our belief, that there does not exist a Northern town of respectable size, or of any size, in which the doer of such a deed, and the givers of such counsel, would not have been sent to gaol amid the execrations of the people. It is simply ridiculous to claim the credit of good manners and good breeding for the community which could tolerate and even applaud such conduct. It is, indeed, conduct which carries us back to the early days of the Southern settlements; but it savours more of Alsatia than of Whitehall. The vulgar Northern notion of the Southern gentlemen' must have been sadly disturbed by this incident. It ought to have been shaken long ago. For although the present year is the first which has witnessed the use of actual physical violence as an expression of Southern sentiment and opinion, the habitually overbearing manner of the Southern men in Congress to their Northern colleagues has long been proverbial in America. Northern men who had been elected to Congress on the ground of their known antislavery views, have been just as regularly and just as speedily sent to coventry in the American Congress, as a Radical would have been in our Parliament before the passing of the Reform Bill. Forty years ago that wise and celebrated man, Judge Story, denounced the schemes of the 'Southern leaders' as the 'insolent Virginia policy;' and the advocacy of that policy has been always as insolent as was its first conception. The public men who have ventured to oppose any of the great measures of the Southern policy, have been met, not merely with argument and with oratory, but with threats and denunciations, and all the machinery of personal intimidation. The Northern representatives, who, thanks to the political indifference and apathy of the better classes at the North, and to the blind confidence in their party leaders of the masses, have been too often mere political gamesters or ordinary men of business, have generally quailed before the fiery audacity of their antagonists. So common a weakness was this on the part of Northern men in Congress, and so well known was it to the South, that when the 'Compromises of 1850' were under discussion, one of the leading journals of Virginia proposed that the Southern men should go into the House of Repre sentatives armed with ladies' ridingwhips, and chastise the Yankee representatives into obedience.' This, of course, may be considered but the frothy ebullition of one man's vulgar petulance, yet the journal in which it appeared is one of the oldest at the South; and it is not in this way that even vulgar men are accustomed to talk of antagonists whom they have been forced to respect. More significant than the actions of individuals are, of course, the actions of the States in their sovereign capacities; and no Southern youth has ever borne himself more loftily among his compeers at the Northern school or college, than have the Southern sovereignties in their intercourse with their con 1856.] Indignities offered by Southern to Northern States. federates. South Carolina, for instance, thought fit to enact as a law that all coloured seamen coming into her ports should be taken out of the vessels in which they sailed, and imprisoned in the common gaol till the departure of the ship. This measure was intended to prevent the dissemination of dangerous doctrines among the negroes of Carolina by their more fortunate brethren from abroad. It was a gross violation of the Constitution which had expressly provided that the citizens of any one State should enjoy in all the other states the rights to which they were entitled at home; and Massachusetts accordingly resolved to interfere, constitutionally and legally, for the protection of her coloured citizens. With this object she despatched to Charleston an agent commissioned to bring the matter to a trial before the United States Courts in Carolina. This agent had been selected with especial reference to the moderation of his views and the respectability of his character. He was a lawyer of the highest standing, an ex-State-Senator, and a gentleman advanced in years. He went to Charleston, accompanied by his daughter, and took lodgings at an hotel. His arrival created the greatest excitement in the city, and the legislature of South Carolina, then sitting at Columbia, was thrown into a ferment by the news. It was resolved that he should be sent out of the State by force, and a committee of 'gentlemen' waited upon him to inform him that it would not be safe for him or for his daughter to remain in Charleston. To this indignity Massachusetts submitted, and contented herself with vindicating the rights of her Commission and her own honour by-a series of resolutions! A similar insult has been but recently put upon the same Northern State, by the State of Alabama, which officially returned a copy of 'Resolutions of the Massachusetts Legislature,' forwarded to Alabama according to custom, by the Governor of Massachusetts, with the declaration that Alabama wished no further intercourse with such a State as Massachusetts.' And during the past winter a bill was 619 proposed, and came near to being carried, in the Alabama Legislature, providing that criminal assaults committed upon citizens of Massachusetts should afford no cause of action in the Courts of Alabama. And that any citizen of Alabama to whom money was due from a citizen of Massachusetts, might seize upon the property of any citizen of Massachusetts which he could find in Alabama, and indemnify himself therefrom.' Upon the notorious fact that it is not safe for any Northern man to travel in the Southern States unless he restrains the expression of his anti-slavery opinions, or has no anti-slavery opinions to restrain, we need not dwell. The real relation which the South considers itself to hold towards the North, was clearly set forth not long ago, by the Richmond Enquirer, a prominent journal of Virginia. According to the Enquirer, the Southern States represent in the American Confederacy, the Roman element, while the Northern States represent the Greek. The Romans, says the Enquirer, were born for politics and for dominion; the Greeks for arts and sciences, for commerce and manufactures-the Romans to rule the world, the Greeks to enrich their masters, and to develop the resources of the earth. While the Northern States have been building, and sailing, and forging, and ploughing, and inventing, and writing, and painting, and carving, the Southern States have been monopolizing political power, and planning dominion. In a word, the South is the Imperial mistress, the North the clever and skilful slave. Rarely have these notions been so frankly avowed by a Southern journal, but they are to be discerned in the whole course of Southern policy. In no act of American history has their influence been more conspicuously visible, however, than in the affair of Kansas. The territory of Kansas lay north of 36° 30' north lat., and was consequently guaranteed to freedom by the Missouri Compromise, which had established that imaginary line as the boundary beyond which slavery must not pass. Kansas is |