Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 32.djvu/39

 Causes of the War. 27

the reason for which the Northern members wanted to exclude Mis- souri as a slave State is very patent. Slavery having been found to be an industrial failure at the North had been abandoned after the Northern and Eastern States had made all that they could out of it by selling off their own slaves and by importing slaves for others, when allowed to do so.

But when this source of profit was cut off by the refusal of the South to receive any more African slaves, the Northern conscience became very tender as to the moral right of any community to de- rive advantage from an industrial system from which the Northern members could get no pecuniary advantage.

The Northern States were jealous of the industrial prosperity and consequent political powers of the Southern States under the slavery system, hence the abolition agitation which made itself so strongly felt in the dispute of the admission of Missouri, and which raged afterwards with ever-increasing fury.

The State of Maine was duly admitted by the concurrence of the Southern votes in Congress, on the understanding that Missouri was to be admitted likewise by the Northern votes, but the Northern members of Congress fraudulently refused to carry out their agree- ment and Missouri still remained excluded from her rights.

Finally she was admitted under the celebrated Missouri Compro- mise, by which slavery was forbidden north of latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes and permitted south of that line.

Here, again, the South committed the grave error of allowing vested rights to be abridged in order to still a temporary storm. Each time that the South agreed to a compromise she weakened herself and strengthened her adversary.

SLAVERY CONSTITUTIONAL.

From this time on the history of sectional disagreement is largely a history of the slavery question.

On May 25, 1836, Mr. Pinckney, of South Carolina, introduced the following resolution in the House of Representatives, which was passed by a vote of 182 to 9 (six of the negative votes being from New England):

"Resolved, That Congress possesses no constitutional authority to interfere, in any way, with the institution of slavery in any of the States of this Confederacy."