Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/140

126 The admission of Missouri into the Union is another clear illustration of the slave-holding power. That contest was marked by the same violence and the same threats as have characterized nullification. On both occasions the planters were pitted against the commercial and manufacturing sections of the country. On both occasions the democracy of the North was, by one means or another, induced to throw its strength upon the Southern lever, to increase its already prodigious power. On both, and on all occasions, some little support has been given to Northern principles in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina; because in portions of those States there is a considerable commercial interest, and some encouragement of free labor. So true it is, in the minutest details, that slavery and freedom are always arrayed in opposition to each other.

At the time of the Missouri question, the pestiferous effects of slavery had become too obvious to escape the observation of the most superficial statesman. The new free States admitted into the Union enjoyed tenfold prosperity compared with the new slave States. Give a free laborer a barren rock, and he will soon cover it with vegetation; while the slave and his task-master, would change the garden of Eden to a desert.

But Missouri must be admitted as a slave State, for two strong reasons. First, that the planters might perpetuate their predominant influence by adding to the slave representation,—the power of which is always concentrated against the interests of the free States.—Second, that a new market might be opened for their surplus slaves. It is lamentable to think that two votes in favor of Missouri slavery, were given by Massachusetts men; and that those two votes would have turned the scale. The planters loudly threatened to dissolve the Union, if slavery were not extended beyond the Mississippi. If the Union cannot be preserved without crime, it is an eternal truth that nothing good can be preserved by crime. The immense territories of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Florida are very likely to be formed into slave States; and every new vote on this side, places the free States more and more at the mercy of the