There has been much misapprehension as to the process of reasoning that brought slaveholders in the main to repudiate their Government.  They were influenced by no apprehension of present danger to the institution of slavery.  It was something far beyond the power of any party to stipulate against.  Their apprehensions were connected with the laws of population and subsistence and the certain motive to political affiliation that underlies the platform of free-labor society.  When indulging in the belief of peaceable secession, they expressed their sentiments truly in the declaration that ’they would not remain in the Union, were a blank sheet of paper presented, and they permitted to write their own terms.’  This declaration merely characterized the foregone conclusion.  It was the evidence of a previous determination, merely withheld for a season, in order to gain time.

But to come to a more definite delineation of the reasons that operated to raise up the conspiracy.  There was a partial feud that had long existed in the mutual jealousies between the slaveholders and non-slaveholding population.  Nothing very remarkable, however, had transpired to indicate an outbreak.  Southern white labor was continually annoyed with the appellation of ‘white trash,’ and other contemptuous epithets; but still was obliged to toil on under the continuous insult.  The habits and usages of slaveholders and their families, indicated by manners toward white labor, that white labor did not command their respect.  Too many of the accidental droppings of foolish and stupid arrogance were let fall within the hearing of white labor to make it fully reconciled to the pretended monopoly of respectability by slaveholders.  Under this corroded feeling, much of the white labor of the South had emigrated to the free States.  In 1850, seven hundred and thirty-two thousand of these emigrants were living.  Their communications and intercourse showed to their old friends, relatives, and acquaintances, that they had found homes and friendly treatment on Northern soil; and in addition thereto, a much better and more encouraging condition of society for the industrious white man.  The feeling reflected back from the free to the slave States was analogous to that thrown back from the United States to Ireland.  Its effect was also the same.  Under its influence, nearly two millions are now living in the free States, who are the offshoot and increase of a Southern extraction.  Slaveholders merely complained of this flow of population, on the ground that it contributed to overthrow the balance of political power.  It would not, perhaps, be amiss to conclude that they saw with equal clearness the incentives that induced the emigration—­a silent logic of facts against slavery.