Now that the new era has come, no statesman, no scholar, no editor, has
ever indicted slavery as the costliest possible form of production, with
half the skill, eloquence and conviction of Southern writers. What
Northern men believe, the Southerner knows. Unconsciously the Southern
youth was handicapped in the commercial race. His Northern brother was
an athlete, stripped to the skin, while he dragged a fetter, invisible.
That he should have come so near to winning the race is a tribute to his
courage, endurance, and a mental resource that can never be praised too
highly. If the rest of the world could only fight for good causes, with
half the ability, chivalry and bravery that the South fought for a bad
economic system, the world would soon enter upon the millennium.




II

WEBSTER AND CALHOUN: THE BATTLE LINE IN ARRAY


The year was 1830; the scene, the Senate Chamber in Washington; the
combatants, Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun. Two hundred and ten
years had now passed since the ship of liberty had come to New England,
and the ship of slavery had landed in Virginia. These centuries had
given ample time for the development of the real genius and influence of
liberty and free labour in the civilization of the North, and of slave
labour upon the institutions of the South. Little by little the
merchants, manufacturers and professional classes of the North had come
to feel that a free and educated working class produces wealth more
cheaply and rapidly than slave labour, and that the working people of