Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 40.djvu/35

Rh benignant captors. So the over-sea slave trade went merrily on for the space of several hundreds of years. Then laggard civilization took a step forward, and said that this was all wrong. The African trade, or the theft and forcible importation of Negroes was abolished, and the Southern States took a hand with the rest in abolishing it. Meantime, civilization was preparing to take another step forward to supplement the cessation of slave importation with the abolition of slavery itself. Owing to local causes some communities were more forward in this movement than were others. The situation in the Southern States was thus sensed by Jefferson: (52) "The cession of that kind of property [slaves], for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle which would not cost me a second thought if in that way a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected; and gradually with due sacrifice I think it might be, but as it is we have the wolf by the ears and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in the one scale and self-preservation in the other." Too, it should be added, slavery remained profitable in the South longer than in some other communities, and Southerners were but human. But the reform was moving forward everywhere, and was bound to triumph in the end. It ought to have been allowed to triumph peaceably. Out of the differences in local conditions, in this and in other matters, arose the fierce controversies between the Southern and the Northern States of the American union.

When the contention had waxed so hot that peaceful union was no longer possible, then the Southern States proposed a peaceable separation. The North said, No; we will force you back. The South said, No; that is all wrong. The Declaration of Independence, the letter and the spirit of the constitution, advancing civilization itself, all proclaim in trumpet tones that it is just as wrong for one nation. State or group of States to conquer another vi et armis and to force upon it a government it does not desire, as it is for one man to steal another man and sell him into bondage, or for a nation now (as was formerly done) to deny to its citizens the right of voluntary expatriation.