Senator elect from Rhode Island, was present, but had not been qualified. The Carolina Senator was called to order. “Order!” “Order!” echoed through the Senate Chamber. “It is contrary to order to call the name of a Senator,” said a distinguished gentleman. The Senator contended he was not out of order, for the Senator from Rhode Island had not been qualified, and consequently was not entitled to a seat. He appealed to the Chair. The Chair replied, “You are correct, sir; proceed;” and proceed he did, calling the name of De Wolfe so often, that before he had finished the document, he had proved the honorable gentleman the importer of three-fourths of the “poor Africans” brought to the Charleston market, and the Rhode Island abolitionist bolted, amid the sympathies of his comrades and the sneers of the auditors.

Such was the aspect of affairs with reference to this question at the time of the adoption of the Constitution. The spirit of affection created and fostered by the revolution—the cords binding together a common country in a common struggle and a common destiny—were too strong in the breasts of our revolutionary fathers for them to countenance the feeble efforts even of those prompted by motives of humanity for the immediate emancipation of the slaves, and by almost the entire North of that period they were regarded with general disfavor, as an unwarrantable interference with an already established institution of the country. The consequence was that they sank into disrepute, and the country was blessed with and prospered under their comparative cessation for a number of years. This hostile feeling long lay dormant, and it was not until the year 1818, when Missouri applied for admission into the Union as a State, that the period of quiet was interrupted, and the little streams of abolitionism that had been quietly forming, merged into the foul and noisome current which is now devastating the land, has undermined and destroyed the Union, and is exerting its blighting influence upon every department of the political and social fabric.

SECOND EPOCH.

CHAPTER III.

Probably there has never been in the history of the United States, except at the present time, a more critical moment, arising from the violence of domestic excitement, than the agitation of the Missouri question from 1818 to 1821. On the 18th day of December, 1818, the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States presented before that body a memorial of the Legislature of the Territory of Missouri, praying that they might be admitted to form a Constitution and State government upon “an equal footing with the original States.” Here originated the difficulty. Slavery existed in the Territory proposed to be erected into an independent State. The proposition was therefore to admit Missouri as a slave State, which involved three very essential and important features. These were:—

1. The recognition of slavery therein as a State institution by the national sovereignty.

2. The guarantee of protection to the ownership of her slave property by the laws of the United States, as in the original States under the Constitution.

3. That the right of representation in the National Legislature should be apportioned on her slave population, as in the original States. This was a recognition of slavery, which at once aroused the interest of the people in every section of the Union.

The petition was received, read and reported upon, and in February, 1819, Mr. Tallmadge, of New York, proposed an amendment “prohibiting slavery except for the punishment of crimes, and that all children born in the said State after the admission thereof into the Union, shall be free at the age of twenty-five years.”

This passed the House, but was lost in the Senate. The excitement, not only in Congress, but throughout the Union, soon became intense, and for eighteen months the country was agitated from one extreme to the other. In many of the Northern States meetings were called, resolutions were passed instructing members how to vote, prayers ascended from the churches, and the pulpit began to be the medium of the incendiary diatribes for which it has since become so famous.

In both branches of Congress amendments were passed and rejected without number, while the arguments on both sides brought out the strongest views of the respective champions.

On one hand it was maintained that the compromise of the federal constitution regarding slavery respected only its existing limits at the time; that it was remote from the views of the framers of the Constitution to have the domain of slavery extended on that basis; that the fundamental principles of the American Revolution and of the government and institutions erected upon it were hostile to slavery; that the compromise of the Constitution was simply a toleration of things that were, and not a basis of things that were to be; that these securities of slavery, as it existed, would be forfeited by an extension of the system; that the honor of the republic before the world, and its moral influence with mankind in favor of freedom, were identified with the advocacy of principles of universal emancipation; that the act of 1787, which established the Territorial government north and west of the river Ohio, prohibiting slavery forever therefrom, was a public recognition and avowal of the principles and designs of the people of the United States in regard to new States and Territories north and west; and that the proposal to establish slavery in Missouri was a violation of all these great and fundamental principles.

On the other hand, it was urged that slavery was incorporated in the system of society as established in Louisiana, which comprehended the Territory of Missouri, when purchased from France in 1803; that the faith of the United States was pledged by treaty to all the inhabitants of that wide domain to maintain their rights and privileges on the same footing with the people of the rest of the country; and consequently, that slavery, being a part of their state of society, it would be a violation of engagements to abolish it without their consent. Nor could the government, as they maintained, prescribe the abolition of slavery to any part of said Territory as a condition of being erected into a State, if they were otherwise entitled to it. It might as well, as they said, be required of them to abolish any other municipal regulation, or to annihilate any other attribute of sovereignty. If the government had made an ill-advised treaty in the purchase of Louisiana, they maintained it would be manifest injustice to make its citizens suffer on that account. They claimed that they were received as a slaveholding community on the same footing with the slave States, and that the existence or non-existence of slavery could not be made a question when they presented themselves at the door of the Capitol of the republic for a State charter.

After much bitter and acrimonious discussion, the question was finally, through the exertions of Henry Clay, settled by a compromise, and a bill was passed for the admission of Missouri without any restriction as to slavery, but prohibiting it throughout the United States north of latitude thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes.

Missouri was not declared independent until August, 1821. Previous to the passage of the bill for its admission, the people had formed a State