engage in the trade, thereby increasing also the price of goods and
confining the benefit to the North, which carries on the coasting
trade of the country, and doing only injury to the South, which has
none of it. Then last, but not least, comes that grievance as to
the Fugitive Slave Law. The law of the land as a whole--the law of
the nation--requires the rendition from free States of all fugitive
slaves. But the free States will not obey this law. They even pass
State laws in opposition to it, "Catch your own slaves," they say,
"and we will not hinder you; at any rate we will not hinder you
officially. Of non-official hinderance you must take your chance.
But we absolutely decline to employ our officers to catch your
slaves." That list comprises, as I take it, the amount of Southern
official grievances. Southern people will tell you privately of
others. They will say that they cannot sleep happy in their beds,
fearing lest insurrection should be roused among their slaves. They
will tell you of domestic comfort invaded by Northern falsehood.
They will explain to you how false has been Mrs. Beecher Stowe.
Ladies will fill your ears and your hearts too with tales of the
daily efforts they make for the comfort of their "people," and of
the ruin to those efforts which arises from the malice of the
abolitionists. To all this you make some answer with your tongue
that is hardly true--for in such a matter courtesy forbids the plain
truth. But your heart within answers truly, "Madam, dear madam,
your sorrow is great; but that sorrow is the necessary result of
your position."

As to those official reasons, in what fewest words I can use I will
endeavor to show that they come to nothing. The tariff--and a
monstrous tariff it then was--was the ground put forward by South
Carolina for secession when General Jackson was President and Mr.