Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/318

306 This contrast between expression of feeling on the one side, and action on the other, was incomprehensible to the abolitionists, who, after the Missouri struggle, began to make themselves felt by agitating, with constantly increasing zeal, the duty of instantly overthrowing slavery on moral grounds. It is not easily understood by our generation, who look back upon slavery as a moral abnormity in this age, and as the easily discernible cause of great conflicts and calamities, which it would have been best to attack and extinguish, the earlier the better. We can only with difficulty imagine the thoughts and emotions of men of that period, who, while at heart recognizing slavery as a wrong and a curse, yet had some of that feeling expressed by Patrick Henry, in his remarkable letter of 1773, — who thought that the abolition of the great evil, while sure finally to come, would still be impossible for a considerable period, and that in the mean time, while slavery legally existed, it must be protected in its rights and interests against outside interference, and especially against all commotions which might disturb the peace of the community. We can now scarcely appreciate the dread of the consequences of sudden emancipation, the constitutional scruples, the nervous anxiety about the threatened Union, and the vague belief in the efficacy of compromises and palliatives, which animated statesmen of Clay's way of thinking and feeling. It is characteristic of that period, that even a man of John Quincy Adams's