That the country should have been geographically divided and sectionally set by the ears over the institution of African slavery was the work of agitation that might have attained its ends by less costly agencies.
How often human nature seeking its bent prefers the crooked to the straight way ahead! The North, having in its ships brought the negroes from Africa and sold them to the planters of the South, putting the money it got for them in its pocket, turned philanthropist.

The South, having bought its slaves from the slave traders of the North under the belief that slave labor was requisite to the profitable production of sugar, rice and cotton, stood by property-rights lawfully acquired, recognized and guaranteed by the Constitution.

Thence arose an irrepressible conflict of economic forces and moral ideas whose doubtful adjustment was scarcely worth what it cost the two sections in treasure and blood.
On the Northern side the issue was made to read freedom, on the Southern side, self-defense.

Neither side had any sure law to coerce the other.
Upon the simple right and wrong of it each was able to establish a case convincing to itself.

Thus the War of Sections, fought to a finish so gallantly by the soldiers of both sides, was in its origination largely a game of party politics.
The extremists and doctrinaires who started the agitation that brought it about were relatively few in number.