In the second place, it taught the South that there was a growing party in the North which was determined to attack slavery at every possible legal point, and prosecute its warfare at every hazard, and that the only safety for the South, with its slavery system, in the Union, was to hold at least equal power in the Congress with the representation from the North. In self-defence the South must secure, therefore, the formation of new slaveholding Commonwealths. At the moment the representation in the Senate was evenly balanced, but in the House it stood against the South, one hundred and forty-one to ninety-nine. One more non-slaveholding Commonwealth, without an offset on the other side, would destroy the balance in the Senate and enable the North to undertake legislation hostile to slavery. The extension of slavery to new Commonwealths was thus manifestly a necessity to its permanent security, and even continuance, in the Commonwealths where it already existed. The policy of the slaveholders must be to allow no new non-slaveholding Commonwealth to be formed without another slaveholding Commonwealth to match it, and to secure the { 276} extension of the territory of the United States toward the South.
In the third place, it aroused the apprehension of slave insurrection, by Abolition incitement, throughout the South, and caused thereby two marked movements in the South, the one legal and the other social. The first was the legislation sharpening and increasing the police power of the public authorities over the slaves, for the purpose of preventing the access of the Abolition doctrines to their minds, and of preventing communication and intercourse between strangers and slaves, and between the slaves themselves. The control of the slave by the master was thus more and more interfered with by the public authorities, for the purpose indeed of aiding the master, which, however, did not alter the fact that from being primarily for the most part a household affair, slavery was becoming more and more an affair of the community. This meant no improvement to the condition of the slave; quite the contrary. The intervention of the whites in the South who owned no slaves in the control of the slaves marks an increase of rigor in the treatment of the slaves. In fact much of the cruelty inflicted upon the slaves during the twenty years between 1840 and 1860 was executed by non-slaveholders, by virtue of the increased control assumed by the public authorities over the relation between master and slave, through the local legislation of that period. The other movement was toward the development of a military caste in the society. The slaveholders, and especially the sons of the slaveholders, now began to understand that they must unite in military organization and make themselves the exclusive military class. The spirit of chivalry and the practices of knighthood were largely developed during this period, with both their good and their bad consequences. On the one side they produced { 277} a high-toned society of proud, noble women, and courtly, haughty men, among the slaveholders. On the other, they degraded all other classes, both white and black. In fact they degraded the poor whites more than they did the blacks. The blacks felt, and were proud of, the increased importance of their masters. And, naturally, this spirit and life among the slaveholding class made the generation which grew up under them eager for adventure and war, intensely tenacious of rights, sensitive to every only apparent discourtesy, and resentful of every semblance of interference from without. The War with Mexico, the filibustering expeditions, and the Civil War itself, were all national consequences of the social development in the South after 1836.