They had in the South more land than could be cultivated by the slaves they then owned, or by their natural increase within any calculable period.

So great was the excess of land that, at the time Texas was annexed, Senator Ashley of Arkansas declared that his State alone could, with the requisite labor, produce a larger cotton-crop than had ever been grown in the whole country.

In the minds of the extreme men of the South the remedy was to be found in re- opening the African slave-trade.

So considerate and withal so conservative a man as Alexander H.Stephens recognized the situation.
When he retired from public service, at the close of the Thirty- sixth Congress, in 1859, he delivered an address to his constituents, which was in effect a full review of the Slavery question.

He told them plainly that they could not keep up the race with the North in the occupation of new territory "unless they could get more Africans." He did not avowedly advocate the re-opening of the slave-trade, but the logic of his speech plainly pointed to that end.
John Forsythe of Alabama, an aggressive leader of the most radical pro-slavery type, carried the argument beyond the point where the prudence of Mr.Stephens permitted him to go.