The Cass County Republican. [volume] (Dowagiac, Mich.) 18??-1880, 1858-12-02

guard against mutiny and insurrection,
and thus wastes energies which other
wise might be employed in national
development and aggrandisement.
The free labor system educates all
alike, and by opening all the fields of
industrial employment, and all depart
ments of authority to the unchecked
and equal rivalry of all classes of men,
at once secures universal contentment
and brings into the highest possible ac-
tivity all the physical, moral and social
energies of the whole state In States
where the slave system prevails, the
masters, directly or indirectly, secure
all political power, and constitute a
ruling aristocracy. In the States where
the free labor system prevails, univer-
sal suffrage necessarily obtains, and the
State inevitably becomes, sooner or
later, Republic or Democracy.
Russia yet maintains slavery, and is
despotism. Most of the other Euro
pean States, have abolished slavery and
adopted the system of free labor. 1t
was the antagonistic political tenden-
cies of the two systems which the first
Napoleon was contemplating when he
predicted that Europe would ultimately
be either all Cossak or all Republican.
Never did human sagacity utter more
pregnant truth. The two systems are
at once perceived to be incongruous.
But they are more than incongruous,
they are incompatible. They never
have permanently existed together in
one country, and they never can. 1t
would be easy to demonstrate this i'm
possibility, from the irreconcilable con-
trast between their great principles
and characteristics. But the expert
ence of mankind has conclusively es-
tablished it. Slavery, as have already
intimated, existed in every State in Eu-
rope. Free labor has supplanted it
everywhere except in Russia and Tur-
key. State necessities, developed in
modern times, are now obliging even
those two nations to encourage and
employ free labor, and already, des-
potic as they are, we find them engaged
in abolishing slavery. In the United
States slavery came into collision with
free labor at the close OF the last cen
tury, and fell before it in New England,
New York, New Jersey, and Pennsyl-
vania, but triumphed over it effectually,
and excluded it for a period yet unde-
termined, from Virginia, the Carolinas
and Georgia. Indeed, so incompati-
bic are the two systems that every new
State which is organized with our ever
extending domain, makes its first politi-
cal act choice of the one and an ex-
clusion Of the other, even at the cost of
civil war, if necessary. The Slave
States, without law, at the last national
election, successfully forbade within
their own limits, even the casting of
votes for candidate for President of
the United States supposed to be favor
able to the establishment of free labor
system in new States.
Hitherto the two systems have ex-
listed in different States, side by side,
within the American Union. This has
happened because the Union is a con-
federation of States. But in another
aspect the United States constitute
only one nation. Increase of popula-
ton, which is filling the States out to
their very borders, together with new
and extended network of railroads and
other avenues, and an internal COM
merce which daily becomes more init
mate, is rapidly bringing the States
into higher and more perfect social
unity or consolidation. Thus these an
tagonistic systems are continually COM
ing into closer contact, and collision
results.
Shall I tell you what this collision
means? They who think it accidental,
unnecessary, the work of interested or
fanatical agitators, and therefore ephe-
neral, mistake the case altogether. 1t
is an impossible conflict between oppos-
ing and enduring forces, and it means
that the United States must, and will,
sooner or later, become either a slave
holding nation, or entirely free labor
nation. Either the cotton and rice
fields of South Carolina and the sugar
plantations of Louisiana, will ultimately
be TILED by free labor, and Charleston
and New Orleans become marts for le-
gitimate merchandise alone, or else the
rye-felds and wheat fields of Massa-
chusetts and New York must again be
surrendered by their farmers to slave
culture and to the production of slaves,
and Boston and New York become once
more markets for trade in the bodies
and souls of men. 1t is the failure to
apprehend this great truth that induces
so many unsuccessful attempts at final
compromise between the slave and
free States and it is the existance of
this great fact that renders all such
pretended compromises when made,
vain and ephemeral. Startling as this
saying may appear to you fellow citi-
zens, it is by no means an original or
even a modern one. Our forefathers
knew it to be true, and unanimously
acted upon it, when they framed the
Constitution of the United States.
They regarded the existence Of the
servile- system in so many of the States
with sorrow and shame, which they
openly confessed, and they looked upon
the collision between them, which was
then just revealing itself, and which we
are now accustomed to deplore, with
favor and hope. They knew that either
the one or the other system must exclu-
sively prevail.
Unlike too manv of those who. in