Alfred H. Stone Collection
Volume: 72

6. J. E. Cairnes, The Slave Power: Its Character, Career, and Probable Designs: Being an Attempt to Explain the Real Issues Involved in the American Contest, 3rd ed. (New York: Follett Foster & Co., 1862). (171 p.)

Series of lectures about slavery in the United States delivered at the University of Dublin in Ireland. A preface to the American edition explains the nature of the work. “Considering Slavery as the true origin of the civil war now existing, he [the author] treats of its economic basis, of the organization, tendencies, development, and external policy of slave societies, and of the career and designs of the slave power, with the calmness of an impartial and philosophic observer, and in a popular and practical manner. Democratic institutions, territorial extension, tariff questions, state rights, secession, and all of the subjects, which either at home or abroad have been made use of to complicate the quarrel, are here put aside as irrelevant; and the philosophic observer concentrates the attention of his readers on the simple issue at stake—‘whether the Power which derives its strength from slavery shall be set up with enlarged resources and increasing prestige, or be now once for all effectually broken.’”