The issues growing out of the subject of the tariff were, however, in many respects entirely distinct from the slavery question. The one involved the highest moral considerations, the other was governed solely by expediency. Whether one man could hold property in another was a question which took deep hold of the consciences of men, and was either right or wrong in itself. But whether the rate of duty upon a foreign import should be increased or lowered was a question to be settled solely by business and financial considerations. Slavery in the United States, as long experience had proved, could be most profitably employed in the cultivation of cotton. The cost of its production, in the judgment of those engaged in it, was increased by the operation of a tariff, whereas its price, being determined by the markets of the world, derived no benefit from protective duties. The clothing of the slave, the harness for the horses and mules, the ploughs, the rope, the bagging, the iron ties, were all, they contended, increased in price to the planter without any corresponding advance in the market value of the product. In the beginning of the controversy it was expected that the manufacture of cotton would grow up side by side with its production, and that thus the community which produced the fibre would share in the profit of the fabric. During this period the representatives from the Cotton States favored high duties; but as time wore on, and it became evident that slave-labor was not adapted to the factory, and that it was undesirable if not impossible to introduce free white labor with remunerative wages side by side with unpaid slave-labor, the leading minds of the South were turned against the manufacturing interest, and desired to legislate solely in aid of the agricultural interest.