Even the passage of that ordinance was, by its silence, assumed to imply a right on the part of the privileged class to colonize with slaves the region lying south of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi.

Unlooked-for events have lent to the privileged class advantages which have more than counterbalanced the adverse effects of this early national legislation. The invention of the cotton-gin, which easily separates the seed from the fibre, has made cotton an almost exclusive agricultural staple in the states of the privileged class, and an eminent commercial staple of the whole country. The national territory has necessarily been enlarged, from time to time, to accommodate an overgrowing population, and an ever-increasing commerce. Favored by these circumstances, the privileged class have at the same time found, in a home production of slaves in Maryland and Virginia, and other states, a compensation for the loss of the African slave trade; and they have not been slothful in unlearning all the fears and dismissing all the timidity and conciliation which marked their conduct during and immediately after the revolutionary war. The admission of Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama, as slaveholding states, into the Union, seemed unavoidable, inasmuch as they were the overgrowth of some of the old thirteen states; and thus these new states south of the Ohio, balancing the growing free states north of that river, served as a sort of balance between the privileged and the unprivileged classes, which it was not necessary to disturb. This was the first final partition of the unsettled territory of the United States between those classes.

In 1804, France ceded to the United States a broad belt, stretching along the western bank of the Mississippi, from the British possessions on the north, to the Spanish province of Texas on the south. This acquisition, which was equally necessary for the safety of the country and for the uses of commerce, stimulated the desire of the privileged class for an extension of their territory and an aggrandizement of their power. New Orleans, situated practically on the coast of the gulf of Mexico, was already at once an ancient slaveholding colony and an important commercial mart. It lay contiguous to the slaveholding states. Under these circumstances, it was, without any resistance, soon organized and admitted into the Union, with its ancient laws and customs tolerating slavery. St. Louis, though destined to acquire great commercial importance, was as yet an inconsiderable town, with few slaveholders and slaves. The Mis

sissippi only divided it from the northwest territory, which was already consecrated to freedom. The best interests of the country required, and humanity demanded, that the ordinance of 1787 should be extended across the Mississippi. The privileged class, however, took possession of the region around St. Louis, and made partial settlements lower down on the west bank of the Mississippi. St. Louis and its environs matured as a state in 1819, and demanded admission with slavery into the Union. Then, only thirty-two years after the passage of the ordinance of 1787, and after its unanimous. ratification by the American people, the privileged class made common cause with the new slaveholding state, and, assuming a tone at once bold, insolent and menacing, they denied the power of congress, although in the territories it was supreme and exclusive, and equally supreme and exclusive in the admission of new states, to legislate at all against their privileges in the territories, or to refuse admission to a new state, on the ground of its refusal to surrender or abate those privileges; and they threatened in one loud voice to subvert the Union, if Missouri should be rejected. The privileged class were backed then by the Senate of the United States, as they have been backed on all similar occasions since that time. They were met, however, with firmness and decision by the unprivileged class in the house of representatives, and so Missouri failed then to be admitted as a slave state. The privileged class resorted to a new form of strategy—the strategy of compromise. They offered to be satisfied if Missouri only should be admitted as a slave state, while Congress should prohibit slavery forever in all the residue of that part of the Louisiana purchase which lay north of the parallel of 36° 30' of north latitude-the territory lying between this parallel and the province of Texas, and constituting what is now the state of Arkansas, being left by implication to slavery. This compromise was accepted, and thus diplomacy obtained for the privileged class immediate advantages, which had been denied to their clamor and passion. This compromise, however, could have only the authority of a repealable act of Congress, so far as the prohibition of slavery north of 36° 30' was concerned. Wise and great men contrived extraordinary forms to bind the faith of the privileged class to that perpetual inhibition. They gave to the compromise the nature and form of a contract, with mutual equivalents between the privileged class and the unprivileged class, which it would be dishonorable and

perfidious on the part of the privileged class, at any time, on any grounds, or under any circumstances, to annul or revoke, or even to draw in question. They proclaimed it to be a contract proper to be submitted to the people themselves, for their ratification, in the popu lar elections. It was so submitted to the people, and so ratified by them. By virtue of this compromise, Missouri came immediately into the Union as a slave state, and Arkansas followed soon afterward as a slave state, while, with the exception of Missouri, the compromise of 1787, by virtue of the same compromise, was extended across the Mississippi, along the parallel of 36° 30', to the Rocky mountains. Thus, and with such solemnities, was the strife of the privileged class of slaveholders for aggrandizement of territory finally composed and forever settled.

It is not my purpose to discuss the policy or the justice of that great settlement. As in the case of the constitution, the responsibility for that great measure rests with a generation that has passed away. We have to deal with it only as a fact, and with the state of affairs that was established by it.

The occupation of the new region west of the Mississippi, which had been thus saved for freedom, was artfully postponed indefinitely by dedicating it as a home for the concentrated but perishing Indian tribes. It sounds in favor of the humanity of the unprivileged class, if not of their prudence, that they neither remonstrated nor complained of that dedication.

The success of the privileged class, in securing to themselves. immediate possession of Missouri and Arkansas, in exchange for the reversionary interest of the unprivileged class in the remainder of the Louisiana purchase, stimulated them to move for new national purchases of domain, which might yield them further acquisitions. Spain was unable to retain longer the slaveholding provinces of East Florida and West Florida, which lay adjacent to the slave states. They fell to the United States by an easy purchase, and the privileged class with due diligence procured their organization as a state, and its admission into the Union. The spell of territorial aggrandizement had fallen on the United States of America, and simultaneously the spell of dissolution had fallen on the United States of Mexico. The privileged class on our side of the border entered Texas, established slavery there in violation of Mexican laws, detached that territory from Mexico, and organized it as an indepen

dent sovereign state. Texas, thus independent and sovereign, sought annexation to the United States. In the very hour when the virtue of a sufficient number of the unprivileged classes was giving way to effect a constitutional annexation of Texas, the president of the United States, with a senate not less subservient to the privileged class, executed a coup d'etat by which that state unlawfully, and in defiance of all precedent, came into the Union under a covenant stipulating that four new slave states might be created out of its territory and admitted as slave states, while, by a solemn mockery, an inconsiderable fragment that lay north of 36o 30' was ostentatiously dedicated to freedom. There remained no other new territory within the United States; and so, by this strange partition of Texas, there was a third final settlement of the pretensions of the privileged class; and it was acquiesced in by the unprivileged class, who thought themselves secure in the old northwest territory by the ordinance of 1787, and equally safe in Kansas and Nebraska by the Missouri compromise.

The public repose that followed the annexation of Texas was of short duration. Mexico resented that offense. A war ensued, and terminated in the transfer of the northern portion of Mexico to the United States. The Mexican municipal laws forbade slavery everywhere, and the new possessions were under that law. Not a whit the less, for that reason, did the privileged class demand either an equal partition, or that the whole should be opened to their colonization with slaves. The house of representatives resisted these pretensions, as it had resisted similar ones before; but the senate seconded the privileged class with its accustomed zeal. So congress was divided, and failed to organize civil governments for the newly acquired Mexican territories, and they were left under martial law. The question raised by the privileged class went down to the electors. The people promptly filled the house of representatives with a majority sternly opposed to the extension of slavery the breadth of a single square mile. They increased the force of the unprivileged class in the senate, while they called to the presidency General Taylor, who, although himself a slaveholder, was committed to non-intervention on the question in congress, and to execute faithfully whatever constitutional laws congress should adopt Under these circumstances, California and New Mexico, youthful communities, practically free from slavery, and uncorrupted by the seductions of

the privileged class or its political organs, hastened to establish constitutions, and apply for admission as free states; while the eccentric population of Deseret, indulging latitudinarian principles equally in matters of religion and of politics, prayed to be received into the Union as a state or as a territory, and with or without slavery, as congress should prescribe. The privileged class remonstrated, and a seditious movement was organized in their behalf in the slaveholding states, to overawe congress, if possible, and to inaugurate revolution if their menaces failed. You all know well the way of that memorable controversy. How eminent men yielded to the menaces without waiting for the revolution, and projected and tendered to the privileged class a new compromise, modeled after the already time-honored compromise of 1820. You all know how firmly, notwithstanding this defection of leaders honored and beloved, the house of representatives, and even the senate, repelled the compromise, and how firmly the unprivileged class of freemen throughout the Union demanded the unqualified and unconditional admission of California into the Union, and refused to allot any further territories to the privileged class, for the extension of the system of human bondage. You all remember, too, how in a critical hour the president sickened and died, and how the hearts of congress and of all the people swooned at his grave, and thenceforward all was lost. You remember how the provisional successor of that ́ ́lamented president with ominous haste accepted the resignation of his cabinet, and committed the seals to a new one, pledged like himself to the adoption of the compromise which the people had condemned; and how at last, after a painful struggle, its adoption was effected. I think, also, that you have not thus soon forgotton the terms of that compromise, the fourth final and everlasting settlement of the conflict between the privileged and the unprivileged classes of this republic. You have not forgotten how the ordinance of 1787, which excluded slavery from the region northwest of the Ohio, was left to stand, as an institution too sacred to be even questioned. How the Missouri compromise, which extended that ordinance across the Mississippi, and over all Kansas and Nebraska, was made at once the authority, precedent, and formula, of the new compromise, and even declared to be an irrepealable law forever. How California, which refused to become a slave state, was grudgingly admitted into the Union as a free one. How the hateful and detestVOL. IV.

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