the Negro problem, has been on the defensive and has been defending an indefensible position. Even while the Constitution was being framed, the representatives of Southern planters waged a bitter fight for the retention of slavery, though Jefferson and Madison and Paine saw the inescapable dangers of temporizing with the evil. From the adoption of the Constitution to the Civil War the energy of Southern leaders, headed by the brilliant Calhoun, was almost solely devoted to the losing battle for the maintenance of human bondage. The Bible was frequently called upon in defence of the system, Abraham's ownership of slaves, and the proscription of covetousness toward a neighbour's manservant or maidservant, his ox or his ass, being cited as approval from Heaven of slavery. Press, pulpit, the schoolroom, and every organ of public opinion were made servile and contributory to retention of the system, which was economically unsound, morally indefensible, at odds with the spirit of the age and of the country, and certain to do irremediable harm to those who profited most from it. Yet the more the tide turned against slavery, the more the articulate South defended it.
Charles and Mary Beard in The Rise of American Civilization give an interesting picture of this energetic defence by the planting South:
