and in the lower Southwest. Then the slave barons looked behind them, and saw to their own dismay that there could be do backward step. The slavery of the new Cotton Kingdom in the nineteenth century must either die or conquer a nation—it could not hesitate or pause. It was an industrial system built on ignorance, force and the cotton plant. The slaves must be curbed with an iron hand. A moment of relaxation and lo! they would be rising either in revenge or ambition. And slavery had made revenge and ambition one. Such a system could not compete with intelligence, nor with individual freedom, nor with miscellaneous and care-demanding crops. It could not divide territory with these things;—to do so meant economic death and the sudden, perhaps revolutionary upheaval of a whole social system. This the South saw as it looked backward in the years from 1820 to 1840. Then its bolder vision pressed the gloom ahead, and dreamed a dazzling dream of empire. It saw the slave system triumphant in the great Southwest—in Mexico, in Central America and the islands of the sea. Its softer souls, timid with a fear prophetic of failure, still held halfheartedly back, but bolder Leaders like Davis, Toombs and Floyd went relentlessly, ruthlessly on. Three steps they and their forerunners took in that great western wilderness, and other steps were planned. Three steps—that cost uncounted treasure in gold and blood: the first in 1820, when they set foot beyond the Mississippi into Missouri; the
