We have seen that from the beginning there were liberal-minded men in
the South who opposed the system of slavery, and if we actually take
note of all the utterances of different men and of the proposals for
doing away with the system, we shall find that about the turn of the
century there was in this section considerable anti-slavery sentiment.
Between 1800 and 1820, however, the opening of new lands in the
Southwest, the increasing emphasis on cotton, and the rapidly growing
Negro population, gave force to the argument of expediency; and the
Missouri Compromise drew sharply the lines of the contest. The South now
came to regard slavery as its peculiar heritage; public men were forced
to defend the institution; and in general the best thought of the
section began to be obsessed and dominated by the Negro, just as it is
to-day in large measure. In taking this position the South deliberately
committed intellectual suicide. In such matters as freedom of speech and
literary achievement, and in genuine statesmanship if not for the time
being in political influence, this part of the country declined, and
before long the difference between it and New England was appalling.
Calhoun and Hayne were strong; but between 1820 and 1860 the South had
no names to compare with Longfellow and Emerson in literature, or with
Morse and Hoe in invention. The foremost college professor, Dew, of
William and Mary, and even the outstanding divines, Furman, the Baptist,
of South Carolina, in the twenties, and Palmer, the Presbyterian of New
Orleans, in the fifties, are all now remembered mainly because they
defended their section in keeping the Negro in bonds. William and Mary
College, and even the University of Virginia, as compared with Harvard
and Yale, became provincial institutions; and instead of the Washington
or Jefferson of an earlier day now began to be nourished such a leader
as "Bob" Toombs, who for all of his fire and eloquence was a demagogue.
In making its choice the South could not and did not blame the Negro
per se, for it was freely recognized that upon slave labor rested such