Among those who thus thought and voted were some of the
wisest statesmen and purest patriots of that period.[8]
This brief retrospect may have sufficed to show that the question of the
right or wrong of the institution of slavery was in no wise involved in
the earlier sectional controversies. Nor was it otherwise in those of a
later period, in which it was the lot of the author of these memoirs to
bear a part. They were essentially struggles for sectional equality or
ascendancy--for the maintenance or the destruction of that balance of
power or equipoise between North and South, which was early recognized
as a cardinal principle in our Federal system. It does not follow that
both parties to this contest were wholly right or wholly wrong in their
claims. The determination of the question of right or wrong must be left
to the candid inquirer after examination of the evidence. The object of
these preliminary investigations has been to clear the subject of the
obscurity produced by irrelevant issues and the glamour of ethical
illusions.
[Footnote 1: It will be remembered that, during her colonial condition,
Virginia made strenuous efforts to prevent the importation of Africans,
and was overruled by the Crown; also, that Georgia, under Oglethorpe,
did prohibit the introduction of African slaves until 1752, when the
proprietors surrendered the charter, and the colony became a part of the
royal government, and enjoyed the same privileges as the other
colonies.
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