reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it. Our Northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under those censures; for, though their people had few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others."

The conclusion to which the mind is irresistibly driven by the mass of evidence adduced is, that the American people, at this early period of their history, were in all respects sufficiently homogeneous, both in regard to local interests and in relation to all questions likely to arise under any common government which they might choose thereafter to establish, as to justify a reasonable hope of reciprocal kindness and permanent concord between them. So far is it, indeed, from being true that any such "antagonisms imbedded in the very nature of our heterogeneous institutions" then existed, as the accomplished author of "The American Conflict" has so emphatically asserted, that it may be safely affirmed that, strictly speaking, African slavery did not any where at that period exist in an institutional form; in relation to which point I shall again cite the language of one who will ever be regarded as the highest authority, in reference to a question of this nature, by all men whose minds are not altogether given up to sectional prejudice or party bigotry. Mr. Webster, in his speech delivered in the national Senate in the year 1848, upon the "EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY FROM THE TERRITORIES," uses the following language:

"The Constitution of the United States recognizes it

(slavery) as an existing fact, an existing relation between the inhabitants of the Southern States. I do not call it an institution, because that term is not applicable to it; for that term seems to imply a voluntary establishment. When I first came here, it was a matter of frequent reproach to England, the mother country, that slavery had been established upon the colonies by her against their consent, and that which is now considered a cherished institution was then regarded as, I will not say an evil, but an entailment on the colonies by the policy of the mother country against their wishes."

The state of public sentiment in regard to slavery in the colonies remained the same throughout the war of the Revolution. With a few exceptions here and there, there were none in the South who were anxious to extend its existence and influence, and there were as few in the North who were inclined to interfere with or complain of its presence wheresoever it had already taken root; so that, when the men of '76 began to take measures for their future safety in the separate and independent condition which they had deemed it wise to assume, they were prepared, with the fullest deliberation, to adopt articles of confederation which in terms provided for the establishment of a "perpetual Union" between those who had then become fraternally associated in the war against the mother country. Nor is it apparent that there was any material change in the feelings and opinions of any portion of the people of the United States in regard to African Slavery up to the year 1789, when the Federal Constitution was adopted. In proof of this fact, I shall again lean upon the authority of Mr. Webster, whose ac

curacy in relation to all matters of this kind is so well established that I am not aware that any deliberately uttered statement of his touching points of disputed American history has ever been by any one directly called in question. In that memorable 7th of March speech which he delivered in the Senate of the United States for "the Constitution and the Union," and which, at the time of its being pronounced, as I well recollect, awakened sentiments of respect and gratitude among conservative and enlightened patriots throughout the length and breadth of the republic-in that speech, for the delivery of which Mr. Calhoun is known, on his dying bed, to have thanked him in the most solemn and formal manner-Mr. Webster thus explicitly covers the ground which I am at present discussing: "Let us, therefore, consider for a moment what was the state of sentiment North and South in regard to slavery at the time this Constitution was adopted. A remarkable change has taken place since; but what did the wise and great men of all parts of the country think of slavery then? In what estimation did they hold it at the time when this Constitution was adopted? It will be found, sir, if we will carry ourselves by historical research back to that day, and ascertain men's opinions by authentic records still existing among us, that there was then no diversity of opinion between the North and the South upon the subject of slavery. It will be found that both parts of the country held it equally an evil-a moral and political evil. It will not be found that, either at the North or at the South, there was much, though there was some, invective against slavery as inhuman and cruel. The great ground of objection to

MR. WEBSTER ON THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT. 39

it was political; that it weakened the social fabric; that, taking the place of free labor, society became less strong and labor less productive; and therefore we find from all the eminent men of the time the clearest expression of their opinion that slavery is an evil. They ascribed its existence here, not without truth, and not without some acerbity of temper and force of language, to the injurious policy of the mother country, who, to favor the navigator, had entailed these evils upon the colonies. I need hardly refer, sir, particularly to the publications of the day. They are matters of history on the record. The eminent men, the most eminent men, and nearly all the conspicuous politicians of the South, held the same sentiments—that slavery was an evil, a blight, a scourge, and a curse. There are no terms of reprobation of slavery so vehement in the North at that day as in the South. The North was not so much excited against it as the South; and the reason is, I suppose, that there was much less of it at the North, and the people did not see, or think they saw, the evils so prominently as they were seen, or thought to be seen, at the South."

CHAPTER III.

Continuation of the same Subject. -Cession of Northwestern Territory by Virginia and other States in 1784.-Ordinance of 1787.-Federal Convention. Correlative and contemporaneous Action of that Body and of the Confederate Congress upon the Subject of African Slavery.-No Conflict worth mentioning then existed between the States of the North and the South in regard to African Slavery.-Action of Congress upon Abolition Petitions in 1790.-Congressional Resolution on the Subject of non-interference with Slavery in the States by the general Government for many Years faithfully observed in the North. Mr. Webster's uncontradicted Statement on this Subject in the Debate between Mr. Hayne and himself.-Washington's Administration. -Election of John Adams; his stormy Administration. Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison, and Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, '9.-Nullification and Secession growing out of these.-John C. Calhoun.-Confederate Constitution professedly based upon the absolute Sovereignty of the States. -This Principle shamefully abandoned by the Confederate Government itself. Successive Administrations of Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madison, and Mr. Monroe.-Rise of the Missouri Question, and violent Agitation consequent thereupon.—Wise and salutary Compromise of that Question.' -Remarks upon the Value of legislative Compromises in general, with Mr. Calhoun's Views of the same.

THERE are one or two remarkable facts in addition to be brought forward in support of this view of the subject, which I will now concisely state.

In the year 1784, Virginia and other states ceded to the United States all the territory northwest of the Ohio River. In the year 1787, the celebrated ordinance was adopted in the Congress then holding its session in the city of New York, by which slavery was forever excluded