Alfred H. Stone Collection
Volume: 73

18. “Slavery and the Slave States,” 27 North British Review (November 1857): 234-50.

Review of two books on slavery in America: Letters from the Slave States by James Sterling, and American Slavery and Colour by William Chambers. The reviewer is prescient in his assessment of slavery’s future in the United States. “Slavery is doomed, and must die. The future is, of course, inscrutable; be we shall venture to hazard an anticipation. The next census—of 1860—will so alter the position of North and South, of Free States and Slave States, that the election of an anti-slavery President, in 1861, may be reckoned as not improbable. Should an anti-slavery President find himself installed in the chair at Washington, the slave question must be brought to an issue, so far as the extension of slavery is concerned. If slavery can then be confined to limits, and no longer allowed to enter new territories, its domestic demolition becomes a matter of detail, as it cannot be perpetuated if confined to definite boundaries.” (The collection has another copy of this article, but with different pagination, in volume 82 [no. 34].)