Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/353

Rh and liberty, and it was devoted to the same noble ends by “a higher law than the Constitution.” How could wise and patriotic men, he asked, when founding institutions, social and political, for countless millions, contemplate the establishment of human bondage as one of them? If slavery, limited as it then was, threatened to subvert the Constitution, how could wise statesmen think of enlarging its boundaries and increasing its influence? He would therefore bar its expansion by all legal means. Climatic conditions were not sufficient to prevent attempts at the introduction of slavery; and wherever he found a law of God or of nature disregarded, he would vote to reaffirm it with all the sanction of civil authority. He put the final issue clearly before the slave-holders and the compromisers. The threats to dissolve the Union did not dismay him. The question was “whether the Union shall stand, and slavery, under the steady, peaceful action of moral, social, and political causes, be removed by gradual voluntary effort and with compensation, or whether the Union shall be dissolved and civil war ensue, bringing on violent but complete and immediate emancipation.” “I feel assured,” he added, “that slavery must give way, and will give way, to the salutary instructions of economy, and to the ripening influences of humanity; that emancipation is inevitable, and is near; that it may be hastened or hindered; and that, whether it shall be peaceful or violent depends upon the question whether it