Chapter LXX: Appendix: E

It is impossible, of course, to pronounce with precision, how great would have been the effect in favor of emancipation, if the effort to resist the admission of Missouri as a slaveholding state had been successful. We can only conjecture what it would have been, by the effect its admission has had in fostering slavery up to its present huge growth and pretensions. If the American people had shown, through their National legislature, a _sincere_ opposition to slavery by the rejection of Missouri, it is probable at least--late as it was--that the early expiration of the 'system' would, by this time, have been discerned by all men.

When the Constitution was formed, the state of public sentiment even in the South--with the exception of South Carolina and Georgia, was favorable to emancipation. Under the influence of this public sentiment was the Constitution formed. No person at all versed in constitutional or legal interpretation--with his judgment unaffected by interest or any of the prejudices to which the existing controversy has given birth--could, it is thought, construe the Constitution, _in its letter_, as intending to perpetuate slavery. To come to such a conclusion with a full knowledge of what was the mind of this nation in regard to slavery, when that instrument was made, demonstrates a moral or intellectual flaw that makes all reasoning useless.

Although it is a fact beyond controversy in our history, that the power conferred by the Constitution on Congress to "regulate commerce with foreign nations" was known to include the power of abolishing the African slave-trade--and that it was expected that Congress, at the end of the period for which the exercise of that power on this particular subject was restrained, would use it (as it did) _with a view to the influence that the cutting off of that traffic would have on the "system" in this country_--yet, such has been the influence of the action of Congress on all matters with which slavery has been mingled--more especially on the Missouri question, in which slavery was the sole interest--that an impression has been produced on the popular mind, that the Constitution of the United States _guaranties_, and consequently _perpetuates_, slavery to the South. Most artfully, incessantly, and powerfully, has this lamentable error been harped on by the slaveholders, and by their advocates in the free states. The impression of _constitutional favor_ to the slaveholders would, of itself, naturally create for them an undue and disproportionate influence in the control of the government; but when to this is added the arrogance that the possession of irresponsible power almost invariably engenders in its possessors--their overreaching assumptions--the contempt that the slaveholders entertain for the great body of the _people_ of the North, it has almost delivered over the government, bound neck and heels, into the hands of slaveholding politicians--to be bound still more rigorously, or unloosed, as may seem well in their discretion.

Who can doubt that, as a nation, we should have been more honorable and influential abroad--more prosperous and united at home--if Kentucky, at the very outset of this matter, had been refused admission to the Union until she had expunged from her Constitution the covenant with oppression? She would not have remained out of the Union a single year on that account. If the worship of Liberty had not been exchanged for that of Power--if her principles had been successfully maintained in this first assault, their triumph in every other would have been easy. We should not have had a state less in the confederacy, and slavery would have been seen, at this time, shrunk up to the most contemptible dimensions, if it had not vanished entirely away. But we have furnished another instance to be added to the long and melancholy list already existing, to prove that,--

"facilis descensus Averni,
Sed revocare gradum
Hoc opus hic labor est,"

if _poetry_ is not _fiction_.

Success in the Missouri struggle--late as it was--would have placed the cause of freedom in our country out of the reach of danger from its inexorable foe. The principles of liberty would have struck deeper root in the free states, and have derived fresh vigor from such a triumph. If these principles had been honored by the government from that period to the present, (as they would have been, had the free states, even then, assumed their just preponderance in its administration,) we should now have, in Missouri herself, a healthful and vigorous ally in the cause of freedom; and, in Arkansas, a free people--_twice_ her present numbers--pressing on the confines of slavery, and summoning the keepers of the southern charnel-house to open its doors, that its inmates might walk forth, in a glorious resurrection to liberty and life. Although young, as a people, we should be, among the nations, venerable for our virtue; and we should exercise an influence on the civilized and commercial world that we most despair of possessing, as long as we remain vulnerable to every shaft that malice, or satire, or philanthropy may find it convenient to hurl against us.[A]

[Footnote A: A comic piece--the production of one of the most popular of the French writers in his way--had possession of the Paris stage last winter. When one of the personages SEPARATES HUSBAND AND WIFE, he cries out, "BRAVO! THIS IS THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE OF THE UNITED STATES!" [Bravo! C'est la Declaration d'Independence des Etats Unis.]

One of our distinguished College-professors, lately on a tour in Europe, had his attention called, while passing along the street of a German city, to the pictorial representation of a WHITE MAN SCOURGING A SUPPLICATING COLORED FEMALE, with this allusion underwritten:--"A SPECIMEN OF EQUALITY--FROM REPUBLICAN AMERICA."

Truly might our countryman have exclaimed in the language, if not with the generous emotions of the Trojan hero, when he beheld the noble deeds of his countrymen pencilled in a strange land--

--"Quis jam locus-- Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?" ]

Instead of being thus seated on a "heaven-kissing hill," and seen of all in its pure radiance; instead of enjoying its delightful airs, and imparting to them the healthful savor of justice, truth, mercy, magnanimity, see what a picture we present;--our cannibal burnings of human beings--our Lynch courts--our lawless scourgings and capital executions, not only of slaves, but of freemen--our demoniac mobs raging through the streets of our cities and large towns at midday as well as at midnight, shedding innocent blood, devastating property, and applying the incendiaries' torch to edifices erected and dedicated to FREE DISCUSSION--the known friends of order, of law, of liberty, of the Constitution--citizens, distinguished for their worth at home, and reflecting honor on their country abroad, shut out from more than half our territory, or visiting it at the hazard of their lives, or of the most degrading and painful personal inflictions--freedom of speech and of the press overthrown and hooted at--the right of petition struck down in Congress, where, above all places, it ought to have been maintained to the last--the people mocked at, and attempted to be gagged by their own servants--the time the office-honored veteran, who fearlessly contended for the _right_, publicly menaced for words spoken in his place as a representative of the people, with an indictment by a slaveholding grand jury--in fine, the great principles of government asserted by our fathers in the Declaration of Independence, and embodied in our Constitution, with which they won for us the sympathy, the admiration of the world--all forgotten, dishonoured, despised, trodden under foot! And this for slavery!!

Horrible catalogue!--yet by no means a complete one--for so young a nation, boasting itself, too, to be the freest on earth! It is the ripe fruit of that _chef d'oeuvre_ of political skill and patriotic achievement--the MISSOURI COMPROMISE.

Another such compromise--or any compromise now with slavery--and the nation is undone.