THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
putable historic fact that, as a rule, the commercial and manufacturing interests at the North were opposed to every anti-slavery agitation, and this opposition was, at times, very bitter, and even violent. There is a very natural and obvious reason for this. Capital engaged in commercial and manufacturing enterprise is always conservative and timid. It abhors unruly disturbance of the existing order of things. Its material prosperity is usually its first, and not seldom its only consideration in determining its attitude as to public affairs, and the prosperity of a large part of the business of the North was thought to depend upon the maintenance of an orderly condition of things in the South and of friendly relations between the two sections of the country. The commercial sentiment, therefore, always anxiously favored every compromise designed to settle, or, at least, to adjourn the difficulties or conflicts springing from the slavery question. It fiercely frowned upon every attempt to shake the Compromise of 1850. If it was in any manner displeased with Douglas's Nebraska bill, it was because that bill upset the Missouri Compromise. But it would have been quite willing to accept that measure, however favorable to slavery, had it promised to secure peace and quiet. And even after Mr. Lincoln's election, it manifested a willingness to surrender the fruits of the anti-slavery victory in a new compromise in order to pacify the slave-power and to avert the impending collision. No fair-minded man can study the history of those times without convincing himself that commercial selfishness not only did not incite and stimulate the anti-slavery movement, but actually discountenanced and resisted it.
I think it can be said without exaggeration that there has never been in the history of this Republic a political movement in which the purely moral motive was so strong—indeed, so dominant and decisive. No doubt, some politicians saw in it
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