The fact is that within those two decades the
slave-holding had been completely outstripped by the non-slave-holding
States in wealth, population, and social growth. The latter had obtained
over the former States an indisputable supremacy in those respects.
Would not the political balance settle also in the natural order of
things in the Northern half of the Union unless it could be kept where
it then was to the south of Mason and Dixon's line by an artificial
political make-weight. This artificial political make-weight was nothing
less than the acquisition of new slave territory to supply the demand
for new slave States. Texas, with the territorial dimensions of an
empire, answered the agrarian needs of the slave system. And the South,
under the leadership of Calhoun, determined to make good their fancied
loss in the settlement of the Missouri controversy by annexing Texas.
But all the smouldering dread of slave domination, all the passionate
opposition to the extension of slavery, to the acquisition of new slave
territory and the admission of new slave States, awoke hotly in the
heart of the North. "No more slave territory." "No more slave States,"
resounded during this crisis, through the free States. "Texas or
disunion," was the counter cry which reverberated through the slave
States. Even Dr. Channing, who had no love for Garrison or his
anti-slavery ultraism, was so wrought upon by the scheme for the
annexation of Texas as to profess his preference for the dissolution of
the Union, "rather than receive Texas into the Confederacy.
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