In 1856, the South began to perceive that all territory hereafter acquired by the federal government, would necessarily enure to the use and benefit of free labor. The immigrant from the free labor States moves easily and readily into the new territories; and the surplus of population being greater at the North than at the South, the majority in any new territory would certainly be from the anti-slavery region. Besides this, the South has no surplus labor to send westward or southward. On the contrary the Gulf States are crying out for more negroes; and the uneasiness of Southern society results from the superabundance of its intellect and capital in proportion to its rude labor. It is impossible, in the present condition of affairs, for the South to get the labor it lacks; and the only means of restoring the balance to its industry is to send its unemployed intellect to a field where no political obstacles prevent it from getting the labor it requires. There are, however, some people in the Southern States who condemn every effort to extend slavery, because they say, it irritates the anti-slavery sentiment, and thus feeds and strengthens hostility to Southern society. With them, the great cure for abolitionism, is rest and inaction on the part of slaveholders. But such are the shallowest of thinkers. It is impossible to keep down the discussion of the slavery question in the United States. The question is one which touches the whole labor of the country, and involves the vital relations of capital with labor.[1] And this is the question which in all ages, and in all countries, has divided states and societies. Hence it is idle to speak of the question being settled; from the nature of things the contest between free and slave labor is “never ending, still beginning.” In September, 1856, the canvass for the presidency was developing the passions and the prejudices of the several sections of the Union; and one of the great parties of the country, in convention assembled, had declared its sympathy and pledged its support to the efforts then being made to regenerate Central America. These promises and pledges were made by the party which relied on the slave States for its success, and it should have looked with favor on a measure which tended to strengthen slavery in the Southern States. But the manner in which the free labor democracy of the North received the decree re-establishing slavery in Nicaragua, is a proof of the hollowness of its professions of friendship for Southern interests. There was scarcely a voice raised in defence of the measure north of the Potomac; though the free-labor States may find, when it is too late, that the only way to avoid revolution, and a conflict of force between the Northern and Southern States of the Union, is by the very policy Nicaragua proposed to establish.