It may readily be seen that this controversy, growing out of the opposite theories of selfish slaveholders on the one hand, and a spirit of beneficence, blended with the idea of a wide-spread advantage on the other, not only involves directly the demerits of slavery, in its prejudicial effect on the non-slaveholding population South, but also the great question of raising up skilled labor in all the States.  It is thus clearly demonstrated that our national policy should be exempt from the control of an arrogant and selfish class.  Slaveholders have had little sympathy with the great bulk of the white people in the Union; at most, they have never manifested it.  Few of them can be trusted politically, where a broad industrial policy is concerned.  No one is better aware than the political slaveholder of the crushing effect of slavery on the interests of the non-slaveholding population in the slave States:  hence their jealousy of this population as a voting, governing power.  The Southern political mind, connected with slaveholding, is astute when sharpened by jealousy.  There is no phase in political economy, bearing on the disparity of classes in the South, that has not been taken into the account and analyzed.  The fear with slaveholders has been, that the great majority, composed of the white laboring population South, would become able to subject matters to the same scrutinizing analysis.

It would be difficult to convince the American people that slavery is not ‘the skeleton in their closet.’  Any one who has encountered for years the pro-slavery spirit; who has watched it through its unscrupulous deviations from rectitude, morally, socially, and politically, will have been dull of comprehension not to have appreciated its atrocious disposition.  Its great instrumentality in the management of Southern masses, consists not only of a disregard, but of a positive interdict of the principles of civil liberty, in all matters wherein the prejudicial effects of slavery might directly, or by implication, be disclosed.  It is true, people are permitted to adulate slavery—­so they are allowed to adulate kings, where kings reign.  No one in recent years has been allowed the open expression of opinion or argument as to the bad effect of a pro-slavery policy on the great majority of Southern white population.  This would bring the offender within the Southern definition of an ‘incendiary,’ and the offense would be heinous.  The pro-slavery spirit has always demanded sycophancy where its strength was great enough to enforce it, and has ever been ready to invoke the law of force where its theories were contradicted.  Even the fundamental law of the South, contained in Southern State Constitutions in favor of the ‘freedom of speech, and freedom of the press,’ is mere rhetorical flourish, where slavery is concerned.  It means that you must adulate slavery if you speak of it; and woe to the man that gives this fundamental law any broader interpretation.  In its amiable moods, the pro-slavery spirit is often made to appear the gentleman.  In its angry, jealous moods, it is both a ruffian and an assassin.  Mr. Sumner, of the Senate, once sat for its picture—­twice in his turn he drew it—­each portrait was a faithful resemblance.