A distinguished foreigner, after travelling in the Southern States, remarked that the very aspect of the country bore testimony to the temerity of the nullifiers, who, defenceless and exposed as they are, could not dare to hazard a civil war; and surely no people in the world have more cause to shrink from an appeal to arms. We find at the South no one element of military strength. Slavery, as we have seen, checks the progress of population, of the arts, of enterprise, and of industry. But above all, the laboring class, which in other countries affords the materials of which armies are composed, is regarded among you as your most deadly foe; and the sight of a thousand negroes with arms in their hands, would send a thrill of terror through the stoutest hearts, and excite a panic which no number of the veteran troops of Europe could produce. Even now, laws are in force to keep arms out of the hands of a population which ought to be your reliance in danger, but which is your dread by day and night, in peace and war. During our revolutionary war, when the idea of negro emancipation had scarcely entered the imagination of any of our citizens--when there were no "fanatic abolitionists," no "incendiary publications," no "treasonable" anti-slavery associations; in those palmy days of slavery, no small portion of the Southern militia were withdrawn from the defence of the country to protect the slaveholders from the vengeance of their own bondmen! This you would be assured was abolition slander, were not the fact recorded in the national archives. _The Secret Journal of Congress_ (Vol. I., p. 105) contains the following remarkable and instructive record:-- "_March 29th, 1779._--The Committee appointed to take into consideration the _circumstances of the Southern States_, and the ways and means for _their_ safety and defence, report, That the State of South Carolina (as represented by the delegates of the said State, and by Mr. Huger, who has come hither at the request of the Governor of said State, on purpose to explain the particular circumstances thereof,) is UNABLE to make any effectual efforts with militia, by reason of the great proportion of citizens _necessary to remain at home, to prevent insurrection among the negroes_, and to prevent the desertion of them to the enemy. That the state of the country, and the great number of these people among them, expose the inhabitants to _great danger_, from the endeavors of the enemy to excite them to revolt or desert."