The rebellious States not only thought it practicable to overthrow the National Government; they, doubtless, also held that result necessary to their safety and success. This followed as a logical conclusion from their established dogma that the slavery of the laboring class is the only firm foundation of social order. They convinced themselves that white men could not perform the labor necessary on cotton and sugar plantations. The negro alone was capable of standing the fierce rays of the Southern sun, and of successfully resisting the deadly malaria which prevails in that region. The Southern people firmly believed this doctrine, although their very eyes, in all parts of their territory, except perhaps in the rice fields of South Carolina and Georgia, thousands of white men were and are daily occupied in this very work. So remarkable a delusion, contradicted by their own daily experience, is by no means uncommon under similar circumstances. When the passions of men are aroused and their interests, real or imaginary, involved, they seldom comprehend the true significance, nor do they stop to estimate deliberately the actual conditions, of what is going on around them. Much less do they understand the character and tendency of great social movements, in which they themselves are actively engaged. The strongest intellects, in such circumstances, do not often escape the prevailing prejudices and delusions. A sort of common moral atmosphere pervades the whole society; opinions become homogeneous; and even the worst abuses, sanctioned by time and by universal custom, lose all their enormity, and command the support and approval even of good men. Palpable errors of fact, and, indeed, every available sophistry in argument, have been adopted by the Southern men to sustain the system of slavery.
The deluded victims of these false ideas could not conceive a different organization of labor as possible for them. It was perhaps even natural for them to consider the opposite system in the Northern States, as hostile to their interests and dangerous to their peculiar property in labor. Nor were they in fact mistaken: not that the Northern social system need have interfered violently to overthrow their institutions; but there was an instinctive feeling that the two could not exist together and flourish in the same community. It was obscurely felt that one must give way before the other, whether peacefully or violently, and it was impossible to doubt which of the two was destined to succumb, under the gradual but inevitable operation of our established political forms and principles. Under the dominion of excited and unreasoning prejudices, the Southern mind could see no distinction between the necessary and irresistible operation of principles and the intentional hostility of their hated rivals. Thus, with a fixed conviction of the inevitable end of their system under the Constitution, it was vainly expected to avoid that unwelcome fate, by destroying the Government of the United States, which had been deliberately created by its founders with a view to the ultimate extinction of slavery.