It was not at all strange that the slaveholders expected to go on from
conquest to conquest.

There were two policies they could adopt. One was to attack the
enemy's citadel; or rather, the several citadels it possessed in its
individual States, and force them to open their doors to the master
and his human chattels. The other was to flank and cover, approaching
the main point of attack by way of the Territories. These, once in
possession of the slaveholders, could be converted into enough slave
States to give them the control of the general government, from which
coigne of advantage they could proceed in their own time and way to
possess themselves of such other free States as they might want.

In the matter of the Territories they had a great advantage. The North
was up against a stone wall at the Canadian border. In that direction
it could not advance a step, while the South had practically an
unlimited field on its side from which to carve possessions as they
might be wanted, very much as you would cut a pie.

In pursuance of its territorial policy--being the line of action it
first resolved upon--the first movement of the South was to annex
Texas--a victory. The next was to make war on Mexico, and (a joke of
the day) conquer a "piece" from it large enough to make half a dozen
States, all expected to be slaveholding--another victory.

By a curious irony the filching of land for slavery's uses from a
neighbor, and on which the foot of a slave had never pressed, was
exultingly spoken of at the time by its supporters as "an extension of
the area of freedom." The act was justified on the ground that we
needed "land for the landless," which led Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio to