They had gained a long succession of political triumphs, which we have briefly traced in this article. They had annexed Texas, and made another slave State of that Territory. They had established the principle that slavery was not to be excluded by law from any of the Territories of the nation. They had repealed the Missouri Compromise, passed the Fugitive Slave Law, obtained the Dred Scott decision from the Supreme Court. In all this they had been aided by the Democratic party, and were sure of the continued help of that party. With these allies, they were certain to govern the country for a long period of years. The President, the Senate, the Supreme Court, were all on their side. As regarded slavery in the States, there was nothing to threaten its existence there. The Republicans proposed only to restrict it to the region where it actually existed, but could not and would not meddle with it therein. If the slave power had been satisfied with this, it seems probable that it might have retained its ascendency in the country for a long period. An immense region was still open to its colonies. Cotton was still king, and the slaveholders possessed all the available cotton-growing regions. They were wealthy, they were powerful, they governed the nation. They threw all this power away by seceding from the Union. Why did they do this? The frequent answer to this question is contained in the proverb, "Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad." No doubt this act was one of madness, and no doubt it was providential. But Providence works not by direct interference, but by maintaining the laws of cause and effect. Why did they become so mad? Why this supreme folly of relinquishing actual enormous power, in order to set their lives and fortunes on the hazard of a die? It seems to be the doom of all vaulting ambition to overleap itself, and to fall on the other side. When Macbeth had gained all his ends, when he had become Thane of Cawdor and Glamis, and king, he had no peace, because the succession had been promised to Banquo:-- "Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown, And put a barren sceptre in my gripe, Thence to be wrenched with an unlineal hand, No son of mine succeeding. If't be so, For _Banquo's_ issue have I filed my mind, For _them_ the gracious Duncan have I murthered, Put rancors in the vessel of my peace. ... To make _them_ kings, the seed of Banquo kings! Rather than so, come fate into the list, And champion me to the utterance." When Napoleon the First was master of nearly all Europe, he could not be satisfied while England resisted his power, and Russia had not submitted to it. So _he_ also said,-- "Rather than so, come fate into the list, And champion me to the utterance."