The history of the United States, as yet unwritten, will show the causes
of the "Civil War" to have been in existence during the Colonial era,
and to have cropped out into full view in the debates of the several
State Assemblies on the adoption of the Federal Constitution, in which
instrument Luther Martin, Patrick Henry, and others, insisted that they
were implanted. African slavery at the time was universal, and its
extinction in the North, as well as its extension in the South, was due
to economic reasons alone. The first serious difficulty of the Federal
Government arose from the attempt to lay an excise on distilled spirits.
The second arose from the hostility of New England traders to the policy
of the Government in the war of 1812, by which their special interests
were menaced; and there is now evidence to prove that, but for the
unexpected peace, an attempt to disrupt the Union would then have been
made. The "Missouri Compromise" of 1820 was in reality a truce between
antagonistic revenue systems, each seeking to gain the balance of power.
For many years subsequently, slaves-as domestic servants-were taken to
the Territories without exciting remark, and the "Nullification"
movement in South Carolina was entirely directed against the tariff.
Anti-slavery was agitated from an early period, but failed to attract
public attention for many years. At length, by unwearied industry, by
ingeniously attaching itself to exciting questions of the day, with
which it had no natural connection, it succeeded in making a lodgment in
the public mind, which, like a subject exhausted by long effort, is
exposed to the attack of some malignant fever, that in a normal
condition of vigor would have been resisted. The common belief that
slavery was the cause of civil war is incorrect, and Abolitionists are
not justified in claiming the glory and spoils of the conflict and in
pluming themselves as "choosers of the slain."
