An essay written during the Civil War that warns that slavery has concentrated power in the slave owners in the South - those who had been able to buy slaves and expand their business. Such power was destabilizing for society as a whole and should not be permitted following the war. "A numerous and independent yeomanry - that is to say , a large class of fairly schooled, intelligent, and respectable freeholders, of moderate, yet sufficient estate - spread over the country, with an honorable share in its government, constitutes one of the most important elements of a healthful state of a nation, and is wholly indispensable to a people whose type of government is that of substantial and orderly freedom..."
