This is the explanation of the veritable panic which Helper's publication created.
A debate which should follow the line of this old division between the peoples of the Atlantic slave States would, under existing conditions, be fatal to the institution of slavery.

West Virginia did become a free State at the first opportunity.

Counties in western North Carolina claim to have furnished a larger proportion of their men to the Union army than any other counties in the country.

Had the plan for peaceable emancipation projected by abolitionists been permitted to take its course, the uplands of South Carolina would have been pitted against the lowlands, and Senator Tillman would have appeared as a rampant abolitionist.

There might have been violence, but it would have been confined to limited areas in the separate States.