the South and West shall be settled by Northern white emigrants with their natural property, or by Southern white emigrants with their legal property,—­and there an end; but it is the question, whether New England or New Africa shall extend her limits,—­whether the country shall be occupied a century hence by a civilized or by a barbarous race.  Every rood of ground yielded to the pretensions of the masters of slaves is so much of the heirloom of freedom and of civilization lost without hope of recovery.  Slavery is transient.

As an institution, such as it has developed itself in our Southern States, it has already, given tokens of decay.  But the qualities of race are so slowly affected by change as to admit of being called constant and permanent.  The predominant influence of the blacks in the Cotton States is already (even putting aside the results of slavery) exhibiting itself in the lowering of the whites.  These States are becoming uninhabitable for the whites,—­not by reason of climate, or of slavery as an institution, but by reason of the operation of the inevitable increase of the slaves.  They must have the land, and the stronger race will be driven out by the weaker, on account of the preponderance of their numbers and the vis inertice of their natures.  There is no room in the United States, or in any of their unsettled territory, for the expansion of this transatlantic Africa.  Where the black race is now settled it will stay, but it must be confined within its present limits.

We do not look upon the simple secession of the Slave States, or of any one of them, as dangerous, so far as the extension of slavery is concerned,—­rather, on the contrary, as likely to end the great debate by securing all unoccupied territory to the North, to freedom, and to the white races.  It is only, if an attempt should be made, for the sake of what is miscalled peace, and for the sake of the Union, to conciliate the misguided and unfortunate people of the South by compromise or concession, that we fear the consequences.

The responsibility under which we are to act is not for our own moral convictions alone, but also for the happiness of all future times.  There is no room for concession, no space for compromise, in the settlement of the question of the prevalence of the black or of the white race on this continent,—­in other words, the prevalence of liberty and Christianity and all their attendant blessings, or that of ignorance and barbarism with their train.  “We will decide this question,” says Mr. Fisher, whose words were written before the necessity for decision was so distinctly presented as at present, “we will decide it, if we can, as a united people; but if we cannot, if cotton and slavery and the negro have already weakened our Southern brethren by their spells and enchantments, so that the South cannot decide according to the traditions and impulses of our race, then we of the North will still decide it, as by right we may,—­by right of reason, of race, and of law.”