Not to the institution of slavery, for
however great a curse it maybe to our people and soil, however
brutalizing in its tendencies, however unjust to the negro race, and
opposed to all the principles of enlightenment and human progress--of
whatever crimes it may have been guilty, this last and greatest of
crimes cannot be laid at its door: for the bitterness of feeling between
North and South existed long before the agitation of slavery was dreamed
of, and the latter has only been seized upon as the ready means of
accomplishing a greater design. Finally, not to any supposed desire in
the Southern mind of establishing an independent empire of the South,
whose people should be homogeneous, whose individual interests
identical, and whose climate, productions, and institutions should move
on in undisturbed harmony forever. For to this last a motive is wanting.
Under no government that the world has ever known could the South have
enjoyed so much freedom, such unexampled prosperity, such a rapid growth
in wealth and power, in a word, so much real happiness--which is the sum
of all earthly gifts--as under this which they are so earnestly
endeavoring to tear down and blot from the face of the earth. Men's
minds do not eagerly grasp and sternly pursue an abstract idea divorced
from every consideration of self-interest, such as this would be.
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