was finally accomplished by Calhoun and Tyler, in 1845, by joint resolution of both houses of Congress. Thus slavery had secured nine slave States and eighteen Senators, to protect the institution in what was called the great citadel of its power, the United States Senate.

The free States saw these vast accessions of political power in the hands of slaveholders, with uneasiness, and murmurs loud and deep began to be heard, but the cotton growing and manufacturing aristocracy rebuked these murmurs, and cried, peace, peace, to those who agitated for freedom. They seemed willing that the statesmen of the slave States should rule the country, if they might go on uninterrupted in their gains.

A most vigorous and determined effort was made to resist the encroachments of the slave power, when the attempt was made to admit Missouri as a slave State. The contest over this question continued from 1819, to 1821, and was finally settled by what has been since known as the Missouri compromise, which was, that Missouri should be admitted into the Union as a slave State, without restriction, and that all territory North and West of Missouri, above latitude 36° 30" should be forever free.

The admission of this State was, on many accounts, a great epoch in the struggle between freedom and slavery. Both parties on this occasion put forth all their strength. Both were aroused to the inherent antagonism between each other. The contest was terminated by a victory of the slaveholders, and by a compromise long considered binding on both sections. A compromise which Douglas himself declared to be a sacred thing which no "ruthless hand would ever be reckless enough to disturb."

The importance of Missouri was not fully appreciated by the free States at that time. If Missouri had been introduced as a free State it would have been decisive of the controversy, and might have saved the republic from a long and bitter controversy—perhaps from the great civil war.

As a free State, Missouri would have been the centre of colonization from which free labor would have passed along the valleys of the Mississippi, the Missouri and the Arkansas,

to the West, and to Northern Texas. As a slave State it crowded off the current of free labor to the Northwest. By this success the slaveholders secured the most commanding position in Central America, and prolonged the power of slavery for forty years. From that time until 1860, the control of slavery over the Federal Government was paramount. Free labor triumphed in California, and in Kansas, but by no aid of the Federal Government, and against its active influence.

From the Missouri struggle down to the Mexican war, the control of the slave power in the Federal Government was decided. The slaveholders always possessed a great advantage in that clause of the Constitution which gave them representation for their slaves. Under this clause a slaveholder owning five thousand slaves had a power in Congress, and in the electoral Colleges for President and Vice President, equal to that of three thousand freemen. Practically his power was far greater, because the slaveholders, few in number, bound together by a common interest, were ever a compact, vigilant, and sagacious body. Thus there grew up substantially, an order of nobility, an aristocracy of slaveholders at the South. The intellect of that portion of the Union was absorbed in politics, while in the free States it was engaged in all the varied pursuits of civilization. The mind of the free States was active in inventing labor-saving machinery; it produced the steam-engine, the cotton-gin; the electric telegraph; the reaping machine; it was opening canals; constructing railways; rivaling the world in ship building; creating a National literature; schools of painting and sculpture; and competing successfully with Europe in mechanism, in the products of skillful labor, in learning, science and the fine arts. The slave States, although in a minority, largely monopolized the offices of power, profit, and influence under the government. They selected their ablest men, and trained them for, and kept them permanently in public life; while at the North a principle of rotation in office, kept many of its ablest men out of public life, and those who entered, held office for so short a period, that their ability to

direct and govern, to make and administer the laws of the land, was greatly lessened.

Thus the slave power, ever watchful, a unit, grasping power, seized and held the reins of government.

The Capital of the Republic under these influences became a great slave mart. The old Commonwealth of Virginia, with her stern republican motto, "Sic semper tyrannis," sought wealth, and found poverty, and barbarism, in breeding slaves for sale to the cotton States on the Gulf of Mexico. The whole power, moral, political, and physical of the government, was wielded to uphold and maintain slavery. The Federal Government interfered to prevent emancipation in Cuba. It refused down to 1862, to hold diplomatic intercourse with Hayti, because it was a Republic of emancipated slaves.

The United States made war upon the Seminole Indiansa tribe occupying a portion of Florida, because that tribe furnished refuge and asylum for escaped slaves. This Seminole war has been well described by a regular officer of the United States Army, as an extensive slave hunt, in which the United States were the leaders and slave hunters. The romantic hero of that war, Osceola, married a beautiful woman with some African blood in her veins, and his children and their mother were seized, carried off, and sold as slaves. The heroic Chief made a very gallant fight, but was most perfidiously, shamelessly entrapped and captured, while holding a friendly talk under a flag of truce. This was a sample of the "chivalry" produced by slavery! Yet such was the lethargy on the subject, that even such acts of atrocity did not arouse the American people to the barbarism of slavery.

It has already been stated that the slave power, desiring Texas, annexed and appropriated it. This was done while Mexico was yet carrying on war for its reduction. But all the acquisitions of slave territory already secured were not sufficient; the slaveholders determined to acquire additional territory South, for the expansion of their institution. Governor Wise, of Virginia, announced the purpose of the slaveholders in Congress, by declaring "slavery should pour itself abroad and have no limit but the Southern Ocean."

This grasping spirit overreached itself, as will presently be seen. At last it had aroused the too long dormant lion of freedom. The slaveholders, after exhausting their cunning in seeking to provoke Mexico to declare war, sent to that Republic the unscrupulous and wily Slidell, (late the emissary of the insurgents to Louis Napoleon,) to provoke her to an act of hostility. He too failed, and the administration then marched an army upon Mexican soil, and declared war upon Mexico. On the 7th of July, 1845, a proclamation was issued by Commander Sloat, declaring that "California, (then a Mexican province,) now belongs to the United States."

The war against Mexico was openly proclaimed to be a war for conquest. The United States wanted California and other Mexican territory. Mexico refused to sell; war was then made upon Mexico, weak and unable to resist, and the territory taken. The gallant and adventurous Fremont scaled the Rocky Mountains and took possession of that land of gold. Generals Scott and Taylor marched their armies at will through Mexico. The pro-slavery administration of President Polk, desiring to secure by treaty, these acquisitions, in 1846 asked an appropriation of two millions with which to negotiate peace. To this appropriation David Wilmot, member of Congress from Pennsylvania, offered a proviso, known in history as the Wilmot proviso, which provided that it should be "an express and fundamental condition in the acquisition of any territory from the Republic of Mexico by the United States, by virtue of any treaty that may be negotiated, and to the use by the Executive of the moneys hereby appropriated, that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude should ever exist in any part of said territory, except for crime, whereof the party should first be duly convicted." This proviso was adopted by the House, but was not at that session of Congress, brought to a vote in the Senate. At the next session President Polk asked an appropriation of three millions for the same purposes, and to this the Wilmot proviso was again attached in the House, by a vote of 115 ayes to 106 noes. The proviso was rejected by the Senate by a vote of 21 ayes to 31 noes. The bill being

returned to the House, was finally, after a furious struggle, passed without the proviso.

In the negotiations which followed, Mexico, sought to make it the condition of the cession of territory, that as it was then free, slavery should be excluded from all territory thus acquired. The United States' Minister peremptorily refused to treat on this basis declaring that "if the whole territory were offered, increased ten fold in value, and covered a foot thick with pure gold, upon the single condition that slavery should be excluded therefrom, he would not entertain the idea for a moment, nor even think of communicating the proposition to Washington."

Such was the animus of the Mexican war, and such the imperious arrogance of slavery.

New Mexico, and upper and lower California, were ceded to the United States without restriction, and the slaveholders were now exultant. They now believed in the indefinite extension of the slave empire. But the days of their supremacy were drawing to an end; there is a Divinity that shapes and moulds the destinies of nations, however men may craftily plan and arrange them.

It was in 1847, during the Mexican war, that Abraham Lincoln served for a single term in Congress. He took his position at once among the anti-slavery members, and voted as he afterwards said, at least forty times for the Wilmot proviso.

The future great leader of emancipation introduced a bill to emancipate slaves in the District of Columbia.

The "irrepressible conflict," and the aggressions of the slave power have thus been briefly sketched.

That power had by its control of the Federal Government, purchased and conquered, annexed and acquired, more territory for slavery than that embraced in all the thirteen original States. It had made war and peace in its own interests. It had controlled all parties. It had dictated to each the selection of its Presidential candidates, and it had carefully and stealthily strengthened itself in the Federal Judiciary. Fealty to slavery was a condition to all appointments under