economic stability as the section possessed. The tragedy was simply that
thousands of intelligent Americans deliberately turned their faces to
the past, and preferred to read the novels of Walter Scott and live in
the Middle Ages rather than study the French Revolution and live in the
nineteenth century. One hundred years after we find that the chains are
still forged, that thought is not yet free. Thus the Negro Problem began
to be, and still is, very largely the problem of the white man of the
South. The era of capitalism had not yet dawned, and still far in the
future was the day when the poor white man and the Negro were slowly to
realize that their interests were largely identical.

The argument with which the South came to support its position and to
defend slavery need not here detain us at length. It was formally stated
by Dew and others[1] and it was to be heard on every hand. One could
hardly go to church, to say nothing of going to a public meeting,
without hearing echoes of it. In general it was maintained that slavery
had made for the civilization of the world in that it had mitigated
the evils of war, had made labor profitable, had changed the nature of
savages, and elevated woman. The slave-trade was of course horrible and
unjust, but the great advantages of the system more than outweighed a
few attendant evils. Emancipation and deportation were alike impossible.
Even if practicable, they would not be expedient measures, for they
meant the loss to Virginia of one-third of her property. As for
morality, it was not to be expected that the Negro should have the
sensibilities of the white man. Moreover the system had the advantage of
cultivating a republican spirit among the white people. In short, said
Dew, the slaves, in both the economic and the moral point of view, were
"entirely unfit for a state of freedom among the whites." Holland,
already cited, in 1822 maintained five points, as follows: 1. That the
United States are one for national purposes, but separate for their