Nor was this the only cause that operated to disappoint the reasonable
hopes and to blight the fair prospects under which the original compact
was formed. The effects of discriminating duties upon imports have been
referred to in a former chapter--favoring the manufacturing region,
which was the North; burdening the exporting region, which was the
South; and so imposing upon the latter a double tax: one, by the
increased price of articles of consumption, which, so far as they were
of home production, went into the pockets of the manufacturer; the
other, by the diminished value of articles of export, which was so much
withheld from the pockets of the agriculturist. In like manner the power
of the majority section was employed to appropriate to itself an unequal
share of the public disbursements. These combined causes--the possession
of more territory, more money, and a wider field for the employment of
special labor--all served to attract immigration; and, with increasing
population, the greed grew by what it fed on.
This became distinctly manifest when the so-called "Republican"
Convention assembled in Chicago, on May 16, 1860, to nominate a
candidate for the Presidency. It was a purely sectional body. There were
a few delegates present, representing an insignificant minority in the
"border States," Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri;
but not one from any State south of the celebrated political line of
thirty-six degrees thirty minutes.
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