Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/250

214 &quot;It was a political movement for the balance of power, balked by the Northern Democracy, who saw their own overthrow and the eventual separation of the States in the establishment of geographical parties divided by a slavery and anti-slavery line.

He says in another place: &quot;The restriction came from the North—the compromise came from the South. The restriction raised the storm—the compromise allayed it.

The required action having been taken by its legislature, and approved by the President, Missouri became a State August 10, 1821.

After the compromise had been concluded the slavery agitation assumed, for a while, a calmer aspect. The line of 36 30, which had been made the dividing line between the Slave and Free States, left by far the greater area of unsettled territory to the North. There remained now to the South only the territories of Arkansas and Florida and what has since become the Indian Territory. North of this line lay the immense stretch of country which embraced the present States of Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, the two Dakotas, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Nebraska, Kansas, part of Colorado, and part of the territory of Wyoming. In addition to this, as the claim of the United States to Oregon extended to the parallel 54° 40’, a large and indefinite area might become Northern territory.

It required no great prescience to foresee that, if political parties should ever come to be arrayed on the geographical line which divided the Free and Slave States, the time was near at hand when the South would become what New England had been, a helpless faction in the government. It was plain that slavery agitation was the strongest lever for the hands of those who wished to promote the geographical alignment, and the efforts of those who desired to prevent such a result must be devoted to allaying the slavery excitement. As yet, the Republican party, though rudely shaken, was too deeply rooted in