South Carolina
leaders were still friendly to national power, and for several years
the ruling party in that state deprecated appeals to state
sovereignty. [Footnote: See chap, xviii. below.] In the next few
years other questions, of an economic and judicial nature, were even
more influential, as a direct issue, than the slavery question. But
the economic life of the south was based on slavery, and the section
became increasingly conscious that the current of national
legislation was shaped by the majority against their interests.
Their political alliances in the north had failed them in the time
of test, and the Missouri question disclosed the possibility of a
new organization of parties threatening that southern domination
which had swayed the Union for the past twenty years. [Footnote:
Adams, Memoirs, IV., 529; King, Life and Corresp. of King, VI., 501;
Jefferson, Writings, X., 175, 193 n.; cf. chap. xi. below; Hart,
Slavery and Abolition (Am. Nation, XVI.), chap, xviii.]
The slavery struggle derived its national significance from the
west, into which expanding sections carried warring institutions.
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