The
weight of his remarks was directed to showing that the complaint of
Northern attacks on slavery as existing in the Southern States, or of
Northern schemes to compel the abolition of slavery, was utterly groundless
and fallacious. At the same time he pointed out the way in which slavery
was continually used to unite the South against the North.
"This feeling," he said, "always carefully kept alive, and
maintained at too intense a heat to admit discrimination or
reflection, is a lever of great power in our political machine.
There is not and never has been a disposition in the North to
interfere with these interests of the South. Such interference has
never been supposed to be within the power of government; nor has
it been in any way attempted. The slavery of the South has always
been regarded as a matter of domestic policy left with the States
themselves, and with which the Federal government had nothing to
do. Certainly, sir, I am and ever have been of that opinion. The
gentleman, indeed, argues that slavery, in the abstract, is no
evil.
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