And yet at that time, and for years after, the opinion of the South itself regarded slavery as an evil--thrust upon them by England--difficult to be got rid of--profitable, it might be, but lamentable and temporary. No slave-holder refused to discuss the subject or to admit the evils of the system. No violence was offered to those who denounced it. The clergy might venture to preach against it. Hopeful persons might foretell the approach of liberty to those unhappy captives. Even the lowest of the slave-holding class did not yet resent the expression of such hopes. But a mighty change was destined to pass upon the tone of Southern opinion. The purchase of Louisiana opened a vast tract of the most fertile land in the world to the growth of cotton; Whitney’s invention made the growth of cotton profitable. Slave-holding became lucrative. It was wealth to own a little plantation and a few negroes; and there was an eager race for the possession of slaves. Importation alone could not supply the demand. Some of the more northerly of the Southern States turned their attention to the breeding of slaves for the Southern markets. Kentucky and Virginia became rich and infamous by this awful commerce.[1] While iniquity was not specially profitable, the Southern States were not very reluctant to be virtuous. When the gains of wickedness became, as they now did, enormous, virtue ceased to have a footing in the South. During many years the leader of the slave-owners was John C. Calhoun. He was a native of South Carolina--a tall, slender, gipsy-looking man, with an eye whose wondrous depth and power impressed all who came into his presence. Calhoun taught the people of the South that slavery was good for the slave. It was a benign, civilizing agency. The African attained to a measure of intelligence in slavery greatly in advance of that which he had ever reached as a free man. To him, visibly, it was a blessing to be enslaved. From all this it was easy to infer that Providence had appointed slavery for the advantage of both races; that opposition to this Heaven-ordained institution was profane; that abolition was merely an aspect of infidelity. So Calhoun taught; so the South learned to believe. [Sidenote: 1850 A.D.] Calhoun’s last speech in Congress warned the North that opposition to slavery would destroy the Union. His latest conversation was on this absorbing theme. A few hours after, he had passed where all dimness of vision is removed, and errors of judgment become impossible!