Summary

Slavery was cast by these New York Republican editors as a sly and incredibly flexible institution that could be altered whenever necessary. It could thrive in any condition, even if it was not wholly profitable.

EXCERPT:

"Slavery Extension has been driven at last, by dire necessity, to playing 'possum. It has no other remaining resource. The people are hard upon it, and die it must--unless it can avoid that catastrophe by merely seeming to be dead. Hence all Northern journals in the interest of Slavery Propaganda are now ringing the charges on the cry that Slavery cannot be extended--that its limits are reached, its destiny attained, and that the Republican party is fighting a chimera--or, rather, pretending to fight one, in pursuit of sinister ends."

"Slavery is notoriously out of place and unprofitable in New York; yet there would be twenty thousand slaves in New York to-day if our laws permitted them to be held here. Slavery is a clear mistake to-day in Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia; yet with what a death-gripe it holds on there! And New Mexico is quite as well adapted to Slavery as three-fourths of Virginia."

Full-text web version of newspaper

"In the heat of the campaign of 1860 both Franklin Democrats and Republicans shifted their emphasis on slavery."