The financial interest at stake in the fate of the institution was so vast, that Southern men felt impelled to seek every possible safeguard against the innumerable dangers which surrounded it.

The revival of the African slave-trade was the last suggestion for its protection, and was the immediate precursor of its destruction.
In reckoning the wealth-producing power of the Southern States, the field of slave labor has been confined to the cotton-belt.

In the more northern of the slave-holding States, free labor was more profitable, and hence the interest in Slavery was not so vital or so enduring as in the extreme South.

There can be little doubt that the slave States of the border would have abolished the institution at an early period except for the fact that their slaves became a steady and valuable source of labor-supply for the increased demand which came from the constantly expanding area of cotton.
But his did not create so palpable or so pressing an interest as was felt in the Gulf States, and the resentment caused by the election of Lincoln was proportionately less.

The border States would perhaps have quietly accepted the result, however distasteful, except for the influence brought upon them from the extreme South, where the maintenance of Slavery was deemed vital to prosperity and to safety.
In the passions aroused by the agitation over slavery, Southern men failed to see (what in cooler moments they could readily perceive) that the existence of the Union and the guaranties of the Constitution were the shield and safeguard of the South.