Then there are general references to life and to labor. After
all, all labor is slavery they say. Apprentices, farm hands, factory
workers are slaves. All this struggling mass of toilers must, in the
fate of life, be consumed in the great drama of furnishing clothes and
food and roofs for those who can pay. But cotton needs more land. And is
not the territory of the United States, the great commons and domains of
all the states, North and South, to be used by them for their several
and common benefit, for the intromission of property: slaves or cattle
or utensils? It seems to me, now that I hear these men talk, that I am
compelled to listen everywhere in America to schemes of trade, material
progress, the accumulation of money. These planters go on to ask why
lines should be drawn across the territory of the United States
forbidding slavery north of the line and permitting it south of the
line. This territory had been paid for equally by the treasure and blood
of all the states. Blood for land! Then slavery on the land to raise
cotton! And was not Jefferson prophetic when he wrote that the extension
of this divisional line in 1820 alarmed him like a fire bell at
midnight? It betokened sectional strife: the North against the South.
And about trade! For as the Southern States grew richer they would have
more political power, could dominate the North.
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