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Wisconsin state agricultural society. 
emigration, and from the sparseness of the population, both in the 
Northern and Southern colonies and the policy of England in intro¬ 
ducing African slavery, wherever it might, in all of them, the insti¬ 
tution of slavery did not raise a definite and firm line of division 
between the tides of population which set in upon New England 
and Virginia from the Old World, and from them later, as from 
new points of departure, were diffused over the continent. The 
material interests of slavery had not become very strong, and in its 
moral aspects no sharp division of sentiment had yet shown itself. 
But when unity and independence of government were accepted by 
the colonies, we shall look in vain for any adequate barrier against 
the natural attraction of the softer climate and rich productions of 
the South, which could keep the Northern population in their harder 
climate and on their less grateful soil, except the repugnancy of 
the two systems of free and slave labor to commixture. Out of this 
grew the impatient, and apparently premature, invasion of the 
Western wilds, pushing constantly onward, in parallel lines, the 
outposts of the two rival interests. What greater enterprise did 
for the Northern people in stimulating this movement was more 
than supplied to the Southern by the pressing necessity for new 
lands, which the requirements of the system of slave cultivation im¬ 
posed. Under the operation of these causes the political divisions 
of the country built up a wall of partition running east and west, 
with the novel consequences of the “ Border States” of the country 
being ranged, not on our foreign boundaries, but on this middle 
line, drawn between the free and slave states. The successive ac¬ 
quisitions of territory, by the Louisiana purchase, by the annexa¬ 
tion of Texas, and by the treaty with Mexico, were all in the inter¬ 
est of the southern policy, and, as such, all suspected or resisted by 
the rival interest in the north. On the other hand, all schemes or 
tendencies toward the enlargement of our territory on the north 
were discouraged and defeated by the south. At length, with the 
immense influx of foreign immigration, reenforcing the flow of pop¬ 
ulation, the streams of free labor shot across the continent. The 
end was reached. The bounds of our habitation were secured. 
The Pacific possessions became ours, and the discovered gold rap¬ 
idly peopled them from the hives of free labor. The rival energies 
and ambitions which had fed the thirst for territory had served 
their purpose, in completing and assuring the domain of the nation. 
