Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/289

Rh all Texas and much of the territory acquired from Mexico.

The rivalry of the colonies included in these two sections in their struggle for population, commerce, wealth and general influence in American affairs, arose early and continued during the century preceding the American Revolution, each section becoming accustomed to a geographical and sectional grouping of colonies and each striving to advance its own local interests. Thus the colonies of both sections grew robustly as separate organizations into the idea of free statehood, but at the same time fostered the dangerous jealousies of sections. The sectional spirit grew alongside the development of colonial statehood. The colonies north became a group of Northern States, and the colonies south a group of Southern States.

The conflict with Great Britain, which had been long impending, brought the sections together in a common cause as against the external enemy, but the achievement of the independence of the several colonies was accompanied by the quick return of the old antagonism which had previously divided them into geographic sections. The loose Union, which had been created pending, the Revolutionary war, through Articles of Confederation, was found inefficient to control or even to direct the irrepressible conflict of opposing or emulating interests. Hence the Constitution of the United States was substituted for the Articles of Confederation and &quot;a more perfect Union&quot; was ordained, expressly to prevent or at least to modify sectional conflicts by the constitutional pledge to promote domestic tranquillity and provide for the general welfare.

During all these struggles of the colonies among them selves, caused by commercial rivalries, the slavery of any part of the population was not the cause of dangerous disagreement anywhere. The British colonies were all slave-holding. Negroes were bought and sold in Bos-