The self-interest thus established led the South, in the face of Northern opposition to slavery which might make an independent government necessary to them, to insist on the sovereignty of the individual States, involving the right to secede from the Union. The Constitution adopted in 1789 did not determine the question as to whether the sovereignty of the States or that of {7} the central government was paramount, but left it open, to be interpreted according to the interests involved, and to be settled in the end by an appeal to the sword. In the earlier history of the country the doctrine of State sovereignty was most advocated in New England; but with the rise of the tariff, which favored the manufacturing East at the expense of the agricultural South, New England passed to the advocacy of national sovereignty, while the people of the South took up the doctrine of State Rights, determined to act on it should a separation seem to be necessary to their independence of action on the issue of slavery. [Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL ROBERT ANDERSON.] [Illustration: FORT MOULTRIE, CHARLESTON, WITH FORT SUMTER IN THE DISTANCE.] [Illustration: SIEGE GUN BEARING ON SUMTER. (Showing carriage rendered useless before Confederate Evacuation, 1864.)] From this time onward there was constant danger that the slavery question would so imbitter the politics and legislation of the country as to bring about disunion. The danger was imminent at the time of the Missouri agitation of 1820-21, but was temporarily averted by the Missouri Compromise. The Nullification Acts of South Carolina indicated the intention of the South to stand on their State sovereignty when it suited them. The annexation of Texas enlarged the domain of slavery and made the issue a vital one. The aggressiveness of the South appeared in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854; and the Dred Scott Decision in 1857, giving the slaveholder the right to hold his slaves in a free State, aroused to indignant and determined opposition the anti-slavery sentiment of the North. The expression in this decision, that the negro had "no rights which the white man was bound to respect," brought squarely before the people the issue of manhood liberty, and afforded a text for preaching effectively the gospel of universal freedom. The absence of intercourse between the North and the South, and their radically different systems of civilization, made them like two different peoples, estranged, jealous and suspicious. The publication of sectional books fostered animosities and perpetuated misjudgments and misunderstandings; and the interested influence of demagogues, whose purposes would be furthered by sectional hatred, kept alive and intensified the sectional differences.