=348. Political Conditions.=—Although the East and North led the rest of the country in manufacturing and commerce, and although the West was developing agriculture to a great degree, political power had not passed to them as completely as a casual observer might have perhaps expected. The South might be conservative, but it had an immense source of wealth in its cotton; and buying, as it did, many supplies from the North, it was a customer not to be offended. Hence many Northern politicians opposed Southern schemes less violently than they would otherwise have done, and hence the South seemed to have disproportionate power at Washington. Besides, Southern planters had more leisure to think of politics than busier citizens elsewhere, and their emotional temperaments naturally inclined them to political leadership. But they were being more and more outnumbered every year in the House of Representatives, and the Missouri Controversy had shown them how increasingly difficult it would be to keep the Senate balanced between free and slave states. In view of their perilous position, they naturally became all the more domineering and haughty in their demands. This, however, roused the temper of the other sections. Wealthy New England had time and means to develop the philanthropic spirit, and an anti-slavery movement was sure to follow. The Northwest, settled largely by New Englanders, would take this movement up, although hampered by the presence of Southern immigrants in Indiana and Illinois. It was impossible either for the descendants of the Puritans or for the hardy pioneers to tolerate long the domination of an aristocracy based on slavery. [Illustration: WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.] =349. The New West.=—The Western man, especially, living in his log cabin, pursuing the primitive unconventional life of a farmer, could not sympathize with an aristocracy that did not work with its hands, and must sympathize with slaves that did. The graces of Southern social life counted for little with Puritan or pioneer, and when the fight was begun the moral enthusiasm of the one, and the shrewd sense, plain morality, and superb energy of the other, would insure the victory for freedom. The election of Jackson, who, although partly a Southerner, was more a Westerner, meant, therefore, not merely the triumph of a new democracy, but that the center of political power had crossed the Alleghanies, and that the control which the South had exercised over the Union from the first was passing to stronger hands. [Illustration: THEODORE PARKER.]