The institution of slavery, under the stimulus given to it by the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney, and the consequent development of the cotton-growing industry--aided, curiously enough, in a certain sense, by the prohibition of the African slave trade, giving rise to the slave-rearing business in Virginia and Maryland--has all along been exhibiting a steady, sturdy, and rapid growth. By the alliance, accidentally as it were, resulting from the prohibition of the slave trade, between the Southern and the Northern slaveholding States, a robustness and consistency were given to the whole slaveholding interest which possibly it might never have had under a different policy. If the foreign importation of slaves had continued, that species of population would gradually have overrun the cotton-raising border of States--would have overrun them to an extent threatening the safety of the institution there by its own plethora--while from the southern line of North Carolina and Tennessee northward, where this extra-profitable industry could not readily be extended, the temptation to the importation of slaves would have been slight, no market existing for the home increase. The hold of the institution would have been constantly weakened there in the affections of the white population; and, in those States, there is a seeming probability that white labor and free labor would have taken the place of the present system, as it did in the States farther north. This would have deprived the Southern belt of cotton-raising and negro-holding States of that sympathy which, under existing circumstances, they have steadily had from their more northern sisters, and favored an early extinction of the system. However this might have been, as things are and have been actually, it is certain that at no period has the growth of the slaveholding institution exhibited any weakness or defect of vitality. Like an infant giant, it has steadily waxed stronger and stronger, and more and more arrogant and aggressive.
When the anti-slavery agitation commenced at the North, the parties who engaged in it had no consciousness of the immense magnitude and potent vitality of the institution against which they proposed to carry on a moral warfare. They supposed that, as a matter of course, they would find a universal sympathy throughout the North with doctrines in behalf of freedom, where freedom was the basis of all our institutions, and where, apparently, there was no alliance of interest, no possible reason for a sympathy with slavery or the denial of freedom to man. They were met unexpectedly by a powerful current of semi-slaveholding opinion pervading the whole area of the Free States, and ready to deny to them free speech or the rightfulness of any effort to arouse the people to a consideration of the subject. When, after some years of contest, this current of prejudgment was partially reversed, and their new thought began to find audience by the Northern ear; when, strengthened by numbers and the better comprehension of the subject by themselves; the increased determination and enthusiasm which arose from the _esprit du corps_; and the assurance--satisfactory to themselves at least--that they were engaged in a good cause; they began to grapple more directly with intensified and genuine pro-slavery sentiment at the South itself, they were astonished to find that, instead of battling with a weak thing, they had engaged in moral strife with one of the most mighty institutions of the earth.