This great demand for cotton affected trade and commerce the world over. The planters had princely incomes from the labor of their slaves. Some of them received $50,000 to $100,000 a year. They said that cotton was king, and ruled the world. They thought that the whole human race was dependent upon them, and that by withholding their cotton a single year they could compel the whole world to acknowledge their power. They were few in number,--about three hundred thousand in thirty millions of people. They used every means possible to extend and perpetuate their power. They saw that the Northern States were beehives of industry, and that the boys swarming from the Northern school-houses were becoming mechanics, farmers, teachers, engaging in all employments, and that knowledge as a power was getting the better of wealth. The men of the North were settling the new States of the West, and political power in Congress was slipping from the hands of the South. To retain that power they must bring additional Slave States into the Union. They therefore demanded the right to take their slaves into new Territories. The Northern school-boys who had grown to be men, who had gone into the far West to build them homes, could not consent to see their children deprived of that which had made them men. They saw that if slavery came in, schools must go out. They saw that where slavery existed there were three distinct classes in society,--the few rich, unscrupulous, hard-hearted slaveholders, the many poor, ignorant, debased white men, and the slaves. They saw that free labor and slave labor could not exist together. They therefore rightfully resisted the extension of slavery into the Territories. But the slaveholders carried the day. The North was outvoted and obliged to yield. The descendants of the first families of Virginia raised slaves for a living. It was degrading to labor, but a very honorable way of getting a living to raise pigs, mules, and negroes,--to sell them to the more southern States,--to sell their own sons and daughters! Their fathers purchased wives: why should they not sell their own children? It was very profitable to raise negroes for the market, and the ministers of the South, in their pulpits on the Sabbath, said it was a Christian occupation. They expounded the Bible, and showed the benevolent designs of God in establishing slavery. It was right. It had the sanction of the Almighty. It was a Divine missionary institution.