the friends of orderly and well-regulated government, and all the honest upholders of true constitutional liberty.

Of the intermediate period which elapsed between the inauguration of Mr. Jefferson as President, on the 4th of March, 1801, and the year 1819, when the celebrated Missouri question shook the republic to its centre, I have only to observe that, with the exception of the period of excitement which intervened when the Embargo measure was upon its trial, and the war of 1812 with Great Britain was in progress, the country, and every portion of it, enjoyed an almost halcyon repose. However fierce may have been the denunciations of the Embargo policy in certain quarters, as well in Congress as out of it, whatever insane and indecent menaces may have been fulminated by Hartford Convention zealots, and others. of a similar complexion, the tranquillity of the republic was at no time dangerously disturbed; the waves of popular excitement were again and quickly calmed into a state of complete serenity, and all angry and unkind feeling was seen once more to disappear. Never were any people in the enjoyment of a more happy, and, to all appearance, a more assured state of domestic quietude than were our honored fellow-countrymen on the 4th of March, 1817. This period of our history is borne in pleasant recollection by persons who still survive, and continues, to some extent, yet to be referred to by them as "the era of good feeling."

But soon came the Missouri struggle, that "fire-bell of the night," as Mr. Jefferson figuratively entitles it. Upon this oft-discussed topic I shall here only hazard a few suggestions, and gladly would I refrain from alluding to

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it altogether, could I do so consistently with the faithful execution of the task which I have assumed. The historic details which belong to this famous contest are already, indeed, sufficiently well known to most of those who may glance over these pages, and recent occurrences have rendered it altogether impossible for men even of ordinary intelligence to avoid some little acquaintance with them.

The principal facts are capable of being concisely stated as follows: The people of the Missouri Territory, in the early part of the year 1818, memorialized Congress for its admission into the Federal Union as a state. This memorial was at first favorably received, and a bill for the admission of the new state was quickly reported to the House of Representatives from the appropriate committee in that body. There was not sufficient time for the bill to become a law before Congress adjourned, to meet again in the month of November of the same. year, when the measure of admission was taken up for consideration. An amendment thereto was now offered by a representative of the State of New York, providing against "the introduction of slavery or involuntary serv itude" in said territory after it should have become a state, and had been admitted into the Federal Union as such. This restriction was incorporated with the bill in the House, and the bill as amended was sent to the Senate for its consideration. The latter body struck out the restrictive amendment, and adopted the bill as a simple act of admission.

In the form which it had thus assumed in the Senate the bill again made its appearance in the House, when a

motion for its indefinite postponement having failed, upon the question which then arose of concurrence in the territorial amendment, a small negative majority was the result, and the bill, embodying again the restriction mentioned, a second time reached the Senate, when, the latter body insisting upon its amendment, it was once more sent back to the House, where a motion that the House should adhere to its vote of disagreement prevailed. Missouri was not, therefore, then admitted. Again the measure was brought forward in the Congress which commenced its session in December, 1819. After much altercation in both Houses, and various movements of cu rious political adroitness not needful to be here specified, with an intense excitement ever on the increase alike in Congress and in the whole country, a compromise, as it was called, was finally agreed upon, whereby the State of Missouri was given admission as a slave state, with its territorial extent limited to the North by the line of 36 degrees 30 minutes north latitude; and in all the remaining territory belonging to the government of the country acquired by purchase from France in the year 1803, slavery or involuntary servitude was forever prohibited.

Such is the substance of the celebrated Missouri Compromise, devised by able statesmen and devoted patriots nearly a half century ago, for the purpose of saving the republic itself from ruin then most seriously menaced. And who shall now censure this wise and noble act, which restored peace once more to a disturbed country, and perchance averted the horrors of war as fierce and terrible as that which we of the present generation have just so painfully realized?

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As to the power of Congress, under the Federal Constitution, to exclude slavery from any portion of the public domain of which it has been given control, I have at present little to say. Whether, under the clause of the Constitution giving to Congress "power to make needful rules and regulations respecting the territory of the United States," that body may adopt, as one of these regulations, such a prohibitory clause as that embodied in the Missouri Compromise, thus assimilating the whole of the vacant territory of which it has been given the administration to that portion merely to which a similar prohibition was extended under the authority of the confederation, is a question exceedingly difficult to be satisfactorily solved; upon which the ablest and purest statesmen, and the most astute and erudite jurists that the country has known have been long most painfully divided in opinion, and one which (perhaps happily for us all) has been now forever settled by the sternest and most inexorable arbiter to whose decision it is possible that the earth-born affairs of mortals can be submitted. But, I again ask, who of us now of the present generation will presume to condemn the peace-makers of 1819? Who is at this moment inclined to bring harsh and undeserved opprobrium upon the great and good men, whether of the North or of the South, who risked their fame, their popularity, and perchance in some instances, also, their repose in social life, for their country's safety at a moment so full of peril? Where is the man that will undertake to deny that, in nearly all the most difficult concerns of human society, when great public interests are at stake, and when questions shall arise for decision eminently dark and difficult

in their character, and which stand surrounded on all sides with considerations of grave and vital expediency, so urgent in their nature as imperiously to demand that all the nobler instincts of the soul should be put in exercise, as well as all the higher faculties of the understanding, for the ascertainment of the true pathway of duty-where is the man, I ask, who will deny that compromise—yes, compromise, a little giving and taking, here and there, on both sides of the line of controversy—a little conciliation, forbearance, yea, and of sacrifice too, if need be, of cherished opinions, of loved personal interests, and of the ambitious desires for local ascendency, may be both wise and patriotic, if any or all of these shall be found to stand in the way of a nation's salvation? Were not such the views of Washington and his compeers of the last century? Is it not in support of such views as these that some men of our times, little less worthy of love and veneration than the men of '76 themselves, have been known to act on more than one critical occasion? Compromise! Compromise! that term hateful to the dreamers and cold abstractionists of the present vapid and shallow generation, but which is, notwithstanding, oftentimes grandly typical of the utmost attainable perfection of human reasoning, when that reasoning may be said to partake least of the discrediting taint of mortality, and to approach most nearly to the unerring and unfathomable wisdom of the Deity himself!

I propose to conclude this chapter with an apt and pregnant quotation from a work of a deceased American statesman on Government, which I fear has been far too little read since its first appearance, about fifteen years ago, even in the very region in which it had its origin,