Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/700

 that this great proclamation for the political tournament would be listened to with indifference and apathy? Was it prepared and presented in that spirit? Did it relate to a subject on which the people were cool or indifferent? A large part of the people of this country look on domestic slavery as "only evil, and that continually," alike to master and to slave, and to the community; to be left alone to the management or enjoyment of the people of the states where it exists, but not to be extended, more especially as it gives, or may give, political supremacy to a minority of the people of this country in the United States government. On the other hand, many of the people of another part of the United States regard slavery, if not in the abstract a blessing, at least as now existing a condition of society best for both white and black, while they exist together; while others regard it as no evil, but as the highest state of social condition. These consider that they cannot, with safety to their interests, permit political ascendency to be largely in the hands of those unfriendly to this peculiar institution. From these conflicting views, long and violent has been the controversy, and experience seems to show it interminable. Many, and probably a large majority of this nation, lovers of quiet, entertained the hope that, after 1850, the so-called compromise measures, even though not satisfactory to the free states, would be kept by their supporters, and made by them what they were professed to be, a finality on the subject of the extent and limitations of slave territory; more especially after the assurances contained in the inaugural address of President Pierce. This hope was fortified with the consideration that at that time congress had, by different provisions, settled by law the condition of freedom or slavery for all the territory of the United States. These hopes have been disappointed, and from this very provision for repose has been extracted a principle for disturbing the condition of things on which its foundation of finality rested—that is, the permanence and continuance of the then existing condition of legal provisions. The establishment of the territorial governments for Utah and New Mexico, without a prohibition of slavery, was sustained by many on the ground that no such provision was required for its exclusion, as the condition of the country and its laws were a sufficient barrier; and therefore they sustained them, because it would complete the series, and finish the provisions as to slavery in all our territory, and make an end of controversy on that subject: yet, in 1854, it was insisted by the friends and supporters of the laws of 1850, and it is actually asserted in the law establishing the territorial government of Kansas, that the laws for new Mexico and Utah, being of the compromise measures, adopt and contain a principle utterly at war with their great and professed object of finality; and that, instead of completing and ending the provisions of congressional action for the territories as to slavery, it really declared a principle which unsettled all those where slavery had been prohibited, and rendered it proper, and only proper, to declare such prohibitions all "inoperative and void." The spirit and feeling which thus perverted those compromise laws, and made them the direct instrument of renewed disturbance, could not