The logic of France, speaking through the voice of that leader and other
men such as Horace Greeley, led the later exodus as certainly as her
pioneers opened the way for the first American settlers. And though the
logic was applied in English fashion, yet it had a notable part in making,
as I have just said, the free soil of the Mississippi Valley contribute to
the freeing of a whole people in slavery, inside and outside of the
valley. That logic learned in France would doubtless have accomplished a
conclusion needing less patching and opportunistic repair if the immediate
interests of those of the frontiers, those who wanted immediate settlement
and development, had not disturbed one of the premises. At any rate, a
great and perhaps the last opportunity to carry such doctrines to their
conclusions without overturning all social and industrial institutions has
gone by. A half-billion acres of inalienable farms, all of the same size,
trespassing upon no ancient rights, interspersed with the white blocks
held for the education of the children of that free soil, might have
furnished an example for all time to be followed or shunned-if, indeed,
all acres had been born of the primeval sea and glaciers not only free but
equal in size.
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