Sons of england it was a question of pedigree in the

sons of England’: it was a question of ‘pedigree’, in the face of which ‘human
art’ was powerless.
70
Here, as we can see, the spatial delimitation of the com
munity of the free, which is the principle on which late eighteenth century
liberal England was based, seems to be on the point of transmuting into a racial
delimitation. And hence, in Calhoun and ideologists of the slaveholding South
in general, a tendency already present in Burke comes to fruition. Having been
spatial, the line of demarcation of the community of the free ends up becoming
racial.
Moreover, there was no insurmountable barrier between the two types of
delimitation. In 1845 John O’Sullivan, popular theorist of the providential
‘manifest destiny’ that put wind in the sails of US expansion, sought to assuage
abolitionists’ concerns about the introduction of slavery into Texas (wrested
from Mexico and on the point of being annexed to the Union) with a sig
nificant argument. It was precisely its temporary extension that created the
conditions for abolition of the ‘the slavery of an inferior to a superior race’, and
hence ‘furnished much probability of the ultimate disappearance of the negro
race from our borders’. At the appropriate time, the ex slaves would be driven
further south, into the ‘only receptacle’ appropriate for them. In Latin America
the population of mixed blood, which had formed following the fusion of the
Spaniards with the natives, would easily be able to accommodate the blacks.
71
The racial delimitation of the community would then give way to a territorial
delimitation. The end of slavery would, at the same time, entail the end of the
presence of blacks in the land of liberty. Despite the abolitionists’ cry of alarm,
69 Quoted in Paul Finkelman, An Imperfect Union , Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1985, p. 28.
70 Burke, Works , vol. 3, pp. 66, 124.
71 John O’Sullivan, ‘Annexation’, United States Magazine and Democratic Review , vol. 4,
July 1845, pp. 7–8.

Liberalism and Racial Slavery
55
the concentration of slaves in a zone immediately proximate to territories that
were fundamentally foreign to the zone of civilization and liberty pushed in
this direction.
For some time Lincoln harboured the idea of deporting the blacks, likewise
regarded by him as ultimately alien to the community of the free, from the
United States to Latin America after their emancipation.
72
In this sense, having
confronted one another for decades, what clashed during the Civil War were
the causes not of liberty and slavery, but precisely two different delimitations
of the community of the free: the opposed parties accused one another of not
knowing how, or not wanting, to delimit the community of the free effectively.
To those who brandished the spectre of racial contamination as an inevitable
consequence of the abolition of slavery, Lincoln replied by emphasizing that in
the United States the overwhelming majority of ‘mulattoes’ were the result of
sexual relations between white masters and their black slaves: ‘slavery is the