Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/402

 39o THE MODERN NATIONS same time the northern boundary between them and British North America — all of which was subsequently included in the Dominion of Canada — was fixed by treaty. The expansion accentuated the important problem of slavery. The leading constitutional difficulty of the new nation was that North and of reconciling state rights and federal rights. On South. two questions the interests of the northern group of states clashed with those of the southern group. The wealth of the south lay in its plantations, notably cotton and tobacco, which were worked by slave labour. In the north there was no demand for slave labour, and wealth was produced by agriculture and manufactures. The manufacturers of the north, faced by the competition of Europe, sought to keep out the competition by high tariffs on imports. The south having no competition to face objected to high tariffs as raising the price of the goods which the southerners wanted to purchase. The south, depending on slave labour, found scriptural warrant for the institution of slavery. The north, not depend- ing on slave labour, perceived that the institution of slavery was immoral and ought to be abolished, or at least forbidden where it was not already established, as where new states were recognised. As the north tended to become pre- dominant in the federal government, the south became increasingly insistent on state rights, and increasingly opposed to federal imposition of tariffs and federal interference with slavery. The point was at last reached when the southern states declared their right to secede from the union, and the northern The American states declared that secession was rebellion. The Civil War. right of withdrawing from a union of states is the characteristic distinction of what is called a Confederation from what is called a Federation. The southerners claimed that the union was only a Confederation, and so were called Confederates ; the northerners, for the corresponding reason, were called Federals. To admit the right of secession would at once have split the new nation into two antagonistic nations, and would have left both in the future without any security for permanence.