of confidence. — 'The fact is,' says one of her own distinguished citizens, 'slavery is the bane and ruin of one portion of our land, and the advantage of free labor and industry has exalted the other portion. The natural consequence is, a morbid sensibility and ever wakeful jealousy on the part of the depressed, and an increasing desire for greater gain and aggrandizement on the part of the other. Yes! it is slavery that sinks the South! See the wide-spread ruin which the avarice of our ancestral government has produced, as witnessed in a sparse population of freemen, deserted habitations, fields without culture; and, strange to tell, even the wolf, driven back long since by the approach of man, now returns, after the lapse of an hundred years, to howl over the desolations of slavery.' — The lands worn out, in a great measure under the ungrateful cultivation of slaves; the population of freemen declining, or wending their westward way; and those interests neglected which would have been cultivated by a free, white, and working population, the South feels but too sensibly every effort which other sections make to sustain themselves, as if oppressive of her, — whilst all the time, the evil, the root of evil, is slavery. The South has injured, and is crushing herself, by cherishing an evil which will yet be found to be more than can be borne. She cannot rise, while the evil remains. She feels it, and the other States see it to be so."[1]
Now, let any one of the Southern States — Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland, or any other — only pass such an Act as has been described, simply a pro-
- ↑ Plea for Africa, Conversation VII.
