years for which the American confederacy has existed, the whole tone of
sentiment with regard to slavery has, in the Southern States at least,
undergone a remarkable change. Slavery used to be treated as a thoroughly
exceptional institution--as an evil legacy of evil times--as a disgrace to
a constitution founded on the natural freedom and independence of mankind.
There was hardly a political leader of any note who had not some plan for
its abolition. Jefferson himself, the greatest chief of the democracy, had
in the early part of this century speculated deeply on the subject; but
the United States became possessed of Louisiana and Florida, they have
conquered Texas, they have made Arkansas and Missouri into States; and
these successive acquisitions have altered entirely the view with which
slavery is regarded. Perhaps as much as anything, from the long license
enjoyed by the editors of the South of writing what they pleased in favour
of slavery, with the absolute certainty that no one would be found bold
enough to write anything on the other side, and thus make himself a mark
for popular vengeance, the subject has come to be written on in a tone of
ferocious and cynical extravagance, which is to an European eye absolutely
appalling. The South has become enamoured of her shame. Free labour is
denounced as degrading and disgraceful; the honest triumphs of the poor
man who works his way to independence are treated with scorn and contempt.
It is asserted that what we are in the habit of regarding as the honorable
pursuits of industry incapacitate a nation for civilisation and
refinement, and that no institutions can be really free and democratic
which do not rest, like those of Athens and of Rome, on a broad substratum
of slavery. So far from treating slavery as an exceptional institution, it
is regarded by these Democratic philosophers as the natural state of a
great portion of the human race; and, so far from admitting that America
ought to look forward to its extinction, it is contended that the property
in human creatures ought to be as universal as the property in land or in
tame animals.