This revolt was only
prevented from gaining its ultimate end by the fact that the Gulf States
could not get on without the active political co-operation of the Border
States. Thus, although such hot-heads as Spratt were not able, even as
late as 1859, to carry a substantial majority of the South with them in
an attempt to reopen the trade at all hazards, yet the agitation did
succeed in sweeping away nearly all theoretical opposition to the trade,
and left the majority of Southern people in an attitude which regarded
the reopening of the African slave-trade as merely a question of
expediency.
This growth of Southern opinion is clearly to be followed in the
newspapers and pamphlets of the day, in Congress, and in many
significant movements. The Charleston _Standard_ in a series of articles
strongly advocated the reopening of the trade; the Richmond _Examiner_,
though opposing the scheme as a Virginia paper should, was brought to
"acknowledge that the laws which condemn the Slave-trade imply an
aspersion upon the character of the South.[14] In March, 1859, the
_National Era_ said: "There can be no doubt that the idea of reviving
the African Slave Trade is gaining ground in the South. Some two months
ago we could quote strong articles from ultra Southern journals against
the traffic; but of late we have been sorry to observe in the same
journals an ominous silence upon the subject, while the advocates of
'free trade in negroes' are earnest and active.
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