Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/439

i860] Condition of the South. 407 not quiet or conclude. So long as there was new territory to be filled with settlers, and formed into States with institutions and laws of their own, there must continue to be strife and controversy regarding what should be done in respect of slavery ; for the slave-owners insisted that they should be insured by law against the risks of change, that they should be made safe against being left in a minority in a country where everything was changing and no one could surely foresee majorities either for or against any institution whatever. Such a contest could not be closed till movements of population and opinion had themselves come to an end. Although no man could certainly foretell, even in 1850, what would be the outcome of the contest between the advocates and the opponents of the extension of slavery into the new Territories, and thus also into the new States which should be formed from them, it was very much plainer then what this was likely to be than it had been in 1821 or in 1787. Southern statesmen did not deceive themselves. They saw as clearly as anyone could see that the great movement of population into the new lands in the West was not only a natural and inevitable economic movement of men seeking to better their fortunes in new homes, but also a game of power, and a game at which they were likely, if not sure, to lose. There was no mistaking the signs of the times or the magnitude of the forces engaged. It was a contest between sections which every year became more and more widely contrasted in life and purpose. It was slavery, of course, which made the South unlike the rest of the country, unlike the rest of the world. The contrast was to her advantage in some respects, though to her deep disadvantage in many others. She had men of leisure because she had slaves ; and nowhere else in the country was there a ruling class like hers. Where men are masters they are likely to be statesmen, to have an outlook upon affairs and an instinct and habit of leadership. Privilege and undisputed social eminence beget in them a pride which is not wholly private, a pride which makes of them a planning and governing order. It was this advantage, of always knowing her leaders, and of keeping them always thus in a school of privilege and authority, that had given the South from the first her marked preeminence in affairs. Her statesmen had led the nation in the era of the Revolution. The Union seemed largely of her making. Madison's had been the planning mind in its con- struction ; Washington's mastery had established it ; Jefferson had made it democratic in practice as in theory. For thirty-two out of the first forty years of the existence of the Union Virginian statesmen had occupied the presidential office, and had guided as well as presided over affairs. The coming-in of Jackson in 1829 had marked a revolutionary change in the politics of the country. The older generation and the older methods of counsel and action were thrust aside; ruling groups of CH. xm.