Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 20.djvu/287

 Unveiling of the Hoivitzer Monument. 281

extension of the line to the Pacific and the North which rejected it. The settlement of 1820 had been already dishonored by denial, and by denial from the North, when, in 1850, it was ignored and annulled on both sides of the line. This was the exceeding wickedness of the South to think that the name should correspond with the reality; to think that when the reality had ceased to exist the utility of the name was not excessive; that when the practical operation of the compromise had been repudiated by the North, with every expres- sion of scorn and contempt, the dead letter need cumber the statute- book no longer. And, after all, what was the practical effect of such a settlement, as derived from actual experience ? It had been wit- nessed in the case of New Mexico (the most important of the Terri- tories), which had been organized for more than ten years, which was open to slavery by the settlement of 1850, whose climate was suitable, which adjoined Texas. It had an area of two million square miles, and at the end of ten years there were upon its soil only twenty-two slaves, and of these only ten were domiciled. Did it injure the negro ? Did it augment slavery ?

JEFFERSON THE AUTHOR OF FREEDOM.

If there was one man who more than any other was the author of freedom in this Western Hemisphere, that man was Thomas Jeffer- son. He was not seeking to augment or prolong slavery. when he wrote to Mr. Holmes, of Massachusetts, who agreed with him : " Of one thing I am certain, that as the passage of slaves from one State to another would not make a slave of a single human being who would not be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater surface would make them individually happier and proportionately facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation by dividing the burthen on a greater number of coadjutors."

This was the great iniquity which caused the whole western reserve of Ohio in a single day to turn from the Whig to Republican.*

made a test question by the final resolution of the series, which on that day passed the Senate by a vote of nearly four to one. On the following day resolutions covering the same ground as to the Territories passed the House by large majorities. The question involved in the Kansas-Nebraska act had been established, as far as the nearly unanimous agreement of both Houses could establish it, sixteen years earlier without creating any excite- ment whatever. It had received the imprimatur of the States and of the people.
 * On January 12, 1838, the princfple of the Kansas-Nebraska act had been