"But, practically," I said, "the thing will now regulate itself, and
both sides are contending very much for an abstract right. It is a war
of feeling, and no one knows where it will end. If the North would say,
'Free labor, which cannot thrive where slavery exists, requires an
amicable division and allotment of the territorial regions; let us agree
where our respective systems shall prevail,'--there would be no
difficulty. But the effort has been to shut out slavery, as men use
sanitary legislation and quarantine to keep out a pestilence. This is
treating fifteen States of the Union as polluted and polluting. Hence
they say, We cannot live together as one people, and we will not."
* * * * *
"What do you honestly think," said Mr. North, "is the true cause of our
present national calamities?"
"They are owing," said I, "originally, to the peculiar state of feeling
on the part of the North toward the South. This was not in consequence
of injury experienced; for slavery had not inflicted injury upon the
North; but, right or wrong, Northern disapprobation of slavery, and the
ways of manifesting it, are the fountain-head of our present national
trouble.
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