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[109] million blacks; the other would have been composed of the rest of the Union—that is to say, of the great body of the free States, continuing to form, under the Federal compact, a single nation from the Atlantic to the Pacific. From amiable, or at least tolerant, associates, the latter would have become formidable rivals and implacable enemies. Finding in their numerous population, in the productive system of free labor, and their vast financial resources, an irresistible element of colonization, they would have successfully competed with the Southern States, already fettered by slavery, divided into hostile castes, and deprived of the resources that emigration brings to the new continent. In a few years, the free States would have completely surrounded the territory occupied by the servile institution, and by thus closing the avenues of future expansion against it, they would have dealt it a mortal blow. Their vast frontiers would have been opened to fugitives from slavery, as soon as the shameful compact by which those neighboring States had pledged themselves to return the fugitive slave had been torn to pieces, with the very Union in whose name it had been procured. In spite of all artificial barriers, a double contraband, favoring the escape of the slave on one hand, would, on the other, have carrried into the South those abolition publications so much dreaded by the latter, which a secret but irresistible propagandism would have circulated among enslaved populations whom the faintest glimpse of liberty was sufficient to excite. This inevitable consequence of separation was predicted long ago by the sagacious mind of De Tocqueville, who foresaw the day when slavery would bring on a terrible crisis, in the midst of which it would disappear, and which even seemed to him destined to prove fatal to one of the two races. He had therefore counselled the men of the South to remain faithful to the Union at all hazards, because, sustained by the numerous white population of the North, he told them, they would be able to abolish slavery slowly without subverting the order of things, and still preserving their social superiority; whereas, if they made an enemy of that population, the latter would soon find a way of freeing their slaves in spite of them and against them. A war of races, which the defeat of the South has rendered
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