slavery was complacent enough, even servilely so, but it might change.
The South thought it had too much at stake to take the chances when
the opportunity for absolute safety and permanent rule was within its
reach. It resolved to make the whole country, not only pro-slavery,
but slaveholding. If, through any mischance, it failed in its
calculation, the next step would be to tear down the house and from
its ruins reconstruct so much of it as might be needed for its own
occupancy. That it would be able in time to possess itself of the
whole country, however, for and in behalf of its industrial policy, it
did not for an instant doubt. It was not empty braggadocio on the part
of the celebrated Robert Toombs, of Georgia, when he uttered his
famous boast.[1] He voiced the practically unanimous opinion of his
section.

[1] See page 13.

Nor was there anything seemingly very presumptuous in that
anticipation. So far, the South had been invariably victorious. In
what appeared to be a decisive battle in the test case of admitting
Missouri into the Union as a slave State, it had won. So pronounced
was its triumph that whatever Anti-Slavery sentiment survived the
conflict appeared to be stunned and helpless. All fight was knocked
out of it. Its spirit was broken. While the South was not only compact
and fully alive, but exultingly aggressive, the North was divided,
fully one half of its population being about as pro-slavery as the
slaveholders themselves, and the rest, with rare exceptions, being
hopelessly apathetic. The Northern leaders of both of the old
political parties--Whig and Democratic--were what the Abolitionists
called "dough-faces," being Northern men with Southern principles. The
Church was "a dumb dog," and the press simply drifted with the tide.