And he proceeds to declare in strong language that “popular principles and axioms are abhorrent to the inclinations of the barons of the South.” This letter was written in the early days of the Revolution. At a later date John Adams testifies again to the discord between the North and the South, and refers particularly to the period after the National Constitution, saying: “The Northern and the Southern States were immovably fixed in opposition to each other.”[211] This was before any question of Tariff or Free Trade, and before the growing fortunes of the North had awakened Southern jealousy. The whole opposition had its root in Slavery,--as also had the earlier resistance to Republican Government. In the face of these influences the Union was formed, but the seeds of conspiracy were latent in its bosom. The spirit already revealed was scarcely silenced; it was not destroyed. It still existed, rankling, festering, burning to make itself manifest. At the mention of Slavery it always appeared full-armed with barbarous pretensions. Even in the first Congress under the Constitution, at the presentation of that famous petition where Benjamin Franklin simply called upon Congress to step to the verge of its power to discourage every species of traffic in the persons of our fellow-men, this spirit broke forth in violent threats. With kindred lawlessness it early embraced that extravagant dogma of State Rights which has been ever since the convenient cloak of treason and conspiracy. At the Missouri Question, in 1820, it openly menaced dissolution of the Union. Instead of throttling the monster, we submitted to feed it with new concessions. Meanwhile the conspiracy grew, until, at last, in 1830, under the influence of Mr. Calhoun, it assumed the defiant front of Nullification; nor did it yield to the irresistible logic of Webster or the stern will of Jackson without a compromise. The pretended ground of complaint was the Tariff; but Andrew Jackson, himself a patriot Slaveholder, at that time President, saw the hollowness of the complaint. In a confidential letter, only recently brought to light, dated at Washington, May 1, 1833, and which during the last winter I had the honor of reading and holding up before the Senatorial conspirators in the original autograph, he says:-- “The Tariff was only the _pretext_, and Disunion and a Southern Confederacy the real object. _The next pretext will be the Negro or Slavery Question._”[212] Jackson was undoubtedly right; but the pretext which he denounced in advance was employed so constantly afterwards as to become threadbare. At the earliest presentation of Abolition petitions,--at the Texas Question,--at the Compromises of 1850,--at the Kansas Question,--at the possible election of Fremont,--on all these occasions, the Union was threatened by angry Slave-Masters.