Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 01.djvu/14

6 constitution had not only ceased to be a palladium for these rights of the slaveholder, but was hardly recognized to be binding at all.

If, then, this instrument was to be relied upon by the slave States to protect them, it was only in the event that they could arm themselves with enough political power to enforce its provisions. So obvious had this become by 1819-'20, when the State of Missouri was struggling for admission as a slave State, that the slave States at that time solemnly asserted their right to settle the unoccupied and unappropriated territory of the United States with their slave property, under the protection of its laws—a right which was as vehemently denied by the free States. So bitter and fierce was this contest, that its agitations shook the very foundations of American society. It was settled for a time by a compromise excluding slavery from the United States Territories north of a line 36° 30' north latitude, and admitting it south of that line. Even this line left the South in a condition of hopeless inferiority, which was but little helped by the acquisition of a portion of Texas as a slave State. When the vast territory obtained from Mexico at the close of the war was organized, the Missouri compromise line was set aside, and the non-intervention principle was adopted, by which it became between the sections a mere question of the ability to colonize—a question in regard to which there could scarcely be a doubt, with the superior resources in wealth and population of the free States. It had become manifest that the South had no protection for its rights but the constitution, nor could it hope to avail itself of that protection without an increase of power in the government. Its hopes for acquiring that were daily becoming less, whilst sectional animosities were constantly becoming more angry and bitter. A party had sprung up which proclaimed the constitution to be "an agreement with death and a covenant with hell." This party was daily becoming stronger and more dangerous in spirit. It began at first by taking part in the contests between Whigs and Democrats, and grew upon the agitations in Congress and the newspaper press. This war of petitions for abolition was commenced by John Quincy Adams in 1831, when he presented a petition from Pennsylvania for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, but at the same time declared that he could not vote for it. He who was so denounced when he left the Federal party, on account of its disunion tendencies, and joined the Democratic under Mr. Jefferson, became the "old man eloquent" when he fanned the smouldering spark of sectional division with the burning breath of hate and anger