with any exact statement of the number of those who enjoyed social position and influence such as to entitle them to be reckoned, in any careful characterization of the elements of southern society, as belonging to the slaveholding class. But upon whatever basis the estimate be made, it is safe to say that less than half the white people of the southern States should be classed among those who determined the tone and methods of southern politics. The ruling class in each State was small, compact,

Its power..

and on the whole homogeneous. It was in

telligent, alert, and self-conscious. It became more and more self-conscious as the anti-slavery agitation proceeded. Its feeling of separateness from the other sections of the country grew more and more intense, its sense of dependence for the preservation of its character upon a single fateful institution more and more keen and apprehensive. It had, besides, more political power and clearer notions of how it meant to use that power than any other class in the country. For the Constitution of the United States provided that three-fifths of the slaves should be added to the whole number of whites in reckoning the population upon which representation in Congress should be proportioned; and the influence of the ruling class in the South was rendered by that provision still more disproportionate to its numerical strength. Still another motive was thus added for the preservation of slavery and the social power which it conferred.

66. Legal Status of Slavery.

The existence of slavery within the respective States depended entirely upon their own independent choice. Statutory It had come into existence by custom merely. recognition. It had, however, received statutory and judicial recognition, and no one pretended to think either that

Congress could interfere with it under the federal Constitution as it stood, or that there was the slightest prospect of the passage of a constitutional amendment giving Congress any powers concerning it. It was not the question of its continued existence in the States where it was already established, but the question of its extension into the Territories of the United States, or the admission into the Union of States like Texas, which already possessed slaves, that was the live question of national politics. It was upon this territorial question that the southern leaders thought it to their interest to be aggressive, in order that the slave States might not be left in a perilous minority when new States came to be added to the Union in the future; and it was here that their aggressiveness stirred alarm and provoked resistance.

events.

This was the field of feverish anxiety and doubtful struggle. Many ominous things were occurring. In Disturbing 1831 Nat Turner's rebellion, the most formidable and terrible of the outbreaks among the southern negroes, had taken place in Virginia, and had seemed to the startled southerners to have some connection with the anti-slavery movement. In 1833 the British Parliament passed a bill abolishing slavery throughout the British Empire, by purchase; and the example of abolition was brought uncomfortably near to our shores in the British West Indies. The Seminole War had dragged on from 1832 to 1839, and had had its immediate bearing upon the question of slavery; for more than a thousand slaves had fled into Florida, while it was a Spanish possession, and had taken refuge among the Indians, with whom they had in many cases intermarried, and it was known that the war was prosecuted largely for the recapture of these fugitives, whom the Seminoles refused to surrender. Last, and most important of all, the question of the admission of Texas, with her slave

system and her vast territory, arose to become the first of a series of questions of free soil or slave soil which were to transform parties and lead directly to civil war. It was not the question of abolition that gained ground, but the question of the territorial limitation of slavery.

of 1787.

As yet but two formal statutes had been passed touching the question of slavery in the Territories, - the Ordinance first the celebrated Ordinance of 1787, which had been adopted by the Congress of the Confederation, and which had excluded slavery from the "Northwest Territory," the region lying north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi (Formation of the Union, § 52). This Ordinance had been confirmed by an Act passed by the Congress of the new government in August, 1789, although it was generally admitted that the Congress of the Confederation had had no constitutional power either to acquire or to govern this territory. It was taken for granted that the power was sufficiently secured to the Congress of the Union by that article of the Constitution which confers upon Congress the power "to make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States." The second Act was that which conMissouri cerned the admission of the State of Missouri compromise. to the Union, by which it had been determined that, with the exception of Missouri, slavery should be wholly excluded from that portion of the Louisiana purchase which lay north of the southern boundary of Missouri extended (Formation of the Union, § 127). Although the greater part of the territory then belonging to the United States had been thus barred against the extension of slavery, not a little of it was left open. The principle of compromise had been adopted, and the southern leaders given to understand that, within a certain space, they had the sanction of the general govern

ment in the prosecution of their efforts to extend their system and their political influence. It was, however, open to any successful party that chose to disregard this compromise in the future to break it and re-open the whole question.

CHAPTER VI.

TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN WAR (1836-1848).

tion.

67. The Whig Programme (1841).

THE Whig party fought and won the campaign of 1840 in one character, and then proceeded to make use of The Whig their victory in quite another character. They transforma- sought the election of Harrison as an opposition party, whose only programme of measures was that the erring Democrats should be ousted and rebuked; and then, when Harrison had been elected, forthwith interpreted the result to mean that they had been commissioned to carry out an elaborate programme of constructive legislation. The party had not been homogeneous enough to venture upon a formulation of active principles before they won the elections; but the elections once gained, they were found ready with a series of reforms.

. The campaign of 1840 had been one of unparalleled excitement and enthusiasm, and, when reckoned by electoral votes, the defeat of Van Buren had seemed overwhelming. Nineteen of the twenty-six States had given majorities for Harrison, only seven for Van Buren. But in most of the States the vote had been very close, and Harrison's popular majority was only 145,914 out of a total vote of almost two millions and a half. Significance of Whig It was the noisy demonstrations of the campaign, still ringing in the ears of the Whigs, that made them deem the recent elections a popular revolution in their favor. A dispassionate examination of

success.