This act was passed with
great unanimity. In the House of Representatives there were one hundred
and thirteen (113) yeas to five (5) nays; and it is a significant fact,
as showing the absence of any sectional division of sentiment at that
period, that the five dissentients were divided as equally as possible
between the two sections: two of them were from Northern and three from
Southern States.[5]
The slave-trade had thus been finally abolished some months before the
birth of the author of these pages, and has never since had legal
existence in any of the United States. The question of the maintenance
or extinction of the system of negro servitude, already existing in any
State, was one exclusively belonging to such State. It is obvious,
therefore, that no subsequent question, legitimately arising in Federal
legislation, could properly have any reference to the merits or the
policy of the institution itself. A few zealots in the North afterward
created much agitation by demands for the abolition of slavery within
the States by Federal intervention, and by their activity and
perseverance finally became a recognized party, which, holding the
balance of power between the two contending organizations in that
section, gradually obtained the control of one, and to no small degree
corrupted the other. The dominant idea, however, at least of the
absorbed party, was sectional aggrandizement, looking to absolute
control, and theirs is the responsibility for the war that resulted.
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