Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 1.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[79] foundation. It was a ditch dug between slavery and free labor, which was becoming wider every day. It was slavery, prosperous in one half of the republic and abolished in the other, which had created in it two hostile communities. It had greatly modified the customs of the one where it was in the ascendant, while leaving the outward forms of government intact. It was, indeed, not the pretext nor the occasion, but the sole cause of that antagonism, the inevitable consequence of which was the civil war.

Therefore, in order to demonstrate the differences of character which the war revealed between the combatants, we must show the constant and fatal influence which the servile institution exercised over the habits, the ideas, and the tastes of those who lived in contact with it. Proteus-like, the question of slavery assumes every variety of form; it insinuates itself everywhere, and always reappears most formidable where one least expects to encounter it. Notwithstanding all that has been said on the subject, our people, who fortunately have not had to wrestle with it, are not aware how much this subtle poison instils itself into the very marrow of society. It was, in fact, in the name of the rights of the oppressed race that they condemned slavery. It was the sentiment of justice in behalf of this race which inspired religions England when, in response to the appeals of Buxton and Wilberforce, she proclaimed emancipation; and which actuated our great National Assembly when it abolished slavery for the first time in our colonies, and those who again prepared for its suppression after the extraordinary act by which the First Consul re-established it upon French soil. It was the picture of the unmerited sufferings of our fellow-beings which stirred up the whole of Europe at the perusal of that romance, so simple and yet so eloquent, called Uncle Tom's Cabin.

But the effects of the servile institution upon the dominant race present a spectacle not less sad and instructive to the historian and philosopher; for a fatal demoralization is the just punishment that slavery inflicts upon those who expect to find nothing in it but profit and power.

In order to demonstrate more clearly to what extent this demoralization is the inevitable consequence of slavery, and how, by an inexorable logic, the simple fact of the enslavement of the