Against all these guaranties and concessions for the support of slavery, Mr.Davis could quote, not anti-slavery aggressions which had been made, but only those which might be made in the future.
SOUTHERN RESISTANCE TO LAW.
This position disclosed the real though not the avowed cause of the secession movement.

Its authors were not afraid of an immediate invasion of the rights of the slave-holder in the States, but they were conscious that the growth of the country, the progress of civilization, and the expansion of our population, were all hostile to their continued supremacy as the governing element in the Republic.

The South was the only section in which there was distinctively a governing class.

The slave-holders ruled their States more positively than ever the aristocratic classes ruled England.

Besides the distinction of free and slave, or black and white, there was another line of demarcation between white men that was as absolute as the division between patrician and plebeian.
The nobles of Poland who dictated the policy of the kingdom were as numerous in proportion to the whole population as the rich class of slave-holders whose decrees governed the policy of their States.
It was, in short, an oligarchy which by its combined power ruled the Republic.