Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/82

72 stitutional power to abolish slavery in the states; but they insisted that Congress had power to suppress the domestic slave-trade, and to abolish slavery “in the District of Columbia, and in those portions of our territory which the Constitution has placed under its exclusive jurisdiction;” and this power Congress was in duty bound to exercise. The methods of “working for the cause” recommended by the Convention consisted in the organization of societies, in the sending out of missionaries to explain and exhort, in circulating anti-slavery tracts and periodicals, in enlisting the pulpit and the press in the work, in giving preference to the products of free labor over those of slave labor, — in one word, “in sparing no exertions nor means in bringing the whole nation to speedy repentance.”

This agitation was carried on with singular devotion, but its startling radicalism did not at first enlist large numbers of converts, or result in the organization of a political force that might have made itself felt at the polls. It did, however, have the effect of exciting great irritation and alarm among the slave-holders, and among those in the North who feared that a searching discussion of the slavery question might disturb the peace of the country; and thus it started a commotion of grave consequences.

About that time the South was in an unusually nervous state of mind. In 1831 an insurrection of slaves broke out in Virginia under the leader-