Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 01.djvu/10

2 that the united government should take charge only of those interests which were common and general. To enforce this necessary distinction, it was provided that all powers, not specially granted, should be reserved to the people and the States, and a list of the granted powers was carefully and specifically made. But two parties soon arose in regard to these limitations. Those who wielded the powers thus granted became interested to remove these limitations as far as possible, whilst the minority, who belonged to the governed rather than the governing party, early learned to regard these limitations as the best and surest defences against the abuses and oppressions of a despotic majority. A tendency soon became manifest in the non-slaveholding portion of the union to constitute themselves into that governing party. Endowed with the greater share of power in the commencement, that preponderance was increased by the course of events. The famous northwestern ordinance, to which the old Virginia fathers were driven by their abhorrence of slavery, without looking too closely to its probable consequences, made the predominance of the non-slaveholding section in the government irresistible. The abolition of the slave-trade, after a time, by the constitution and the northwestern ordinance, left the growing superiority of that section not even doubtful. But the acquisition of Louisiana made another order of growth in political power possible as between the two sections. The bare possibility of such a result kindled a violent opposition in some portions of the non-slaveholding section. In New England it was particularly angry, and there sprung up for the first time in the history of our government audible threats of separation. The "land hunger" of the Anglo-Saxon race, as Theodore Parker calls it, soon quieted the opposition to the acquisition of territory, but a far more bitter strife arose as to the equal rights of the two sections to settle the vacant territory of the Union and grow possibly pari passu in power. So fierce was the strife, and so loud its tumult, that for the first time it broke upon Mr. Jefferson's ear like "a fire bell in the night." The contest between the two sections over the limitations in the constitution upon the governing party under it began with the commencement of its history, and ended only, as I shall presently show, with the revolution which destroyed the old form and established the despotism of a majority of numbers. It is in the history of this contest we must look for the true causes of the war, and the use made of the victory by the winning party will show the object and nature of that contest. When it became obvious that the only protection of