Thus, it was characteristic of our peculiar political forms, that they gave opportunity for the complete trial of each of the two plans of social organization which grew out of the early introduction of African slaves into the colonies. For while it seems to be clear that the federal system was most favorable to the disappearance of slavery from those localities where circumstances made emancipation easy and advantageous, it is equally plain that it afforded full scope to the growth and influence of the system of servile labor, wherever, from climatic conditions, it was peculiarly profitable, and otherwise adapted to the productions of the region, and to the prevailing sentiments of the people. The confederated form of government, therefore, almost of necessity originated the antagonism of Free States against Slave States; while, at the same time, and from the same cause, it enabled the opposite sections to give infinitely greater force and effect to this antagonism, than would have been possible under any other constitutional conditions. Rebellion might possibly have been initiated within the bosom of a consolidated republic, and such a government might well have been broken into two or more fragments; but this would have been far less likely to happen in that case than in existing circumstances. At all events, there would have been no room for the dangerous doctrine of secession, and that plausible pretext would have been wanting to the incipient rebellion; nor would there have been anything equivalent to the State organizations which unfortunately afforded the ready means of immediate and most effective combination. The inestimable advantages of our complex political system in avoiding the necessary despotism of consolidated government, by establishing local legislation and administration in a number of partially independent States, were in some measure counterbalanced by a natural tendency to discord among the parts, and a capacity for independent action in support and perpetuation of dangerous divergencies of opinion and policy. If some States could repudiate slave labor, and gradually build the fabric of their prosperity on the safer basis of universal education, others could, with equal disregard of everything but their own will and fancied interests, cherish and encourage the original system of servile subordination and compulsory ignorance of the laboring class, with which all the States started into their career of independence at the commencement of the Revolution. And, unhappily, both parties to this discordant social action were unrestrained by any constitutional obligation, or by any common authority whatever, in the indulgence, within their respective limits, of mutual hatred and vituperation, with all those numberless and exasperating injuries which no law can either notice or redress. These conflicting capabilities, with their attendant dangers, lurked in the body of our political organization from the very beginning.