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344 be hastened or hindered; that all measures which fortify slavery or extend it, tend to the consummation of violence; all that check its extension and abate its strength, tend to its peaceful extirpation.”

A fortnight later Chase followed in a similar strain. “It may be,” he said, “you will succeed here in sacrificing the claims of freedom by some settlement carried through the forms of legislation. But the people will unsettle your settlement. It may be that you will determine that the territories shall not be secured by law against the ingress of slavery. The people will reverse your determination. It may be that you will succeed in burying the ordinance of freedom. But the people will write upon its tomb, 'I shall rise again.' And the same history which records its resurrection may also inform posterity that they who fancied they killed the Proviso, only committed political suicide.”

Such utterances were received by Southern men with explosions of anger, or an affectation of contempt; by the compromisers, with emphatic protests. Even some of the more timid among the opponents of slavery were frightened by words so bold. About Seward's “higher law,” of which the Democrats took advantage to brand him as a traitor to the Constitution, many Northern Whigs shook their heads in alarm. Clay was very indignant at so high-handed a way of dealing with his “comprehensive scheme of adjustment,” and