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176 passions to the point of open defiance. The dissolution of the Union, civil war, and streams of blood were freely threatened by Southern men, while some anti-slavery men declared themselves ready to accept all these calamities rather than the spread of slavery over the territories yet free from it. Neither was the excitement confined to the halls of Congress. As the reports of the speeches made there went over the land, the people were profoundly astonished and alarmed. The presence of a great danger, and a danger, too, springing from an inherent antagonism in the institutions of the country, suddenly flashed upon their minds. They experienced something like a first violent shock of earthquake, making them feel that the ground under their very feet was at the mercy of volcanic forces. It is true, wise men had foretold some thing like this, but actual experience was far more impressive than the mere prediction had been. Resolutions earnestly demanding the exclusion of slavery from Missouri were passed by one after another of the Northern legislatures except those of New England, where, however, the same sentiment found vigorous expression in numerous memorials from cities and towns. Of the slave-holding states, one, Delaware, spoke through a unanimous resolve of its legislature in the same sense; and even in Baltimore a public meeting protested against the extension of slavery. But beyond these points no anti-slavery sentiment made itself heard in the South. The legislatures of Virginia and