In the foreground,
therefore, I take the position that those who resisted violations of the
compact were the true friends, and those who maintained the usurpation
of undelegated powers were the real enemies of the constitutional Union.
PART I.
CHAPTER I.
African Servitude.--A Retrospect.--Early Legislation with Regard
to the Slave-Trade.--The Southern States foremost in prohibiting
it.--A Common Error corrected.--The Ethical Question never at
Issue in Sectional Controversies.--The Acquisition of
Louisiana.--The Missouri Compromise.--The Balance of
Power.--Note.--The Indiana Case.
Inasmuch as questions growing out of the institution of negro servitude,
or connected with it, will occupy a conspicuous place in what is to
follow, it is important that the reader should have, in the very outset,
a right understanding of the true nature and character of those
questions. No subject has been more generally misunderstood or more
persistently misrepresented. The institution itself has ceased to exist
in the United States; the generation, comprising all who took part in
the controversies to which it gave rise, or for which it afforded a
pretext, is passing away; and the misconceptions which have prevailed in
our own country, and still more among foreigners remote from the field
of contention, are likely to be perpetuated in the mind of posterity,
unless corrected before they become crystallized by tacit acquiescence.
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