SAD AUGURIES OF MR. JEFFERSON.

53

"Although I had laid down as a law to myself never to write, talk, or even to think of politics-to know nothing of public affairs-and had, therefore, ceased to read newspapers, yet the Missouri question aroused and filled me with alarm."

Such extracts from his various writings on this subject, as those below, are well deserving of attention, in illustration of the views already herein expressed in regard to it, and as explanatory of constitutional obligations, by an eminent contemporary of the Constitution. He further remarks:

"The question is a mere party trick. The leaders of Federalism, defeated in their schemes of obtaining power by rallying partisans to the principle of monarchism * are taking advantage of the virtuous feeling of the people to effect a division of parties by a geographical line; they expect that this will insure them on local principles the majority they could never obtain on principles of Federalism.

"Our anxieties in this quarter are all concentrated in the question, What does the holy alliance in and out of Congress mean to do with us on the Missouri question? * * * Are our slaves to be presented with freedom and a dagger? For if Congress has the power to regulate the condition of the inhabitants of the States within the States, it will be but another exercise of that power to declare them all free.

"The coincidence of a marked principle, moral and political, with a geographical line once conceived, I feared would never more be obliterated from the mind; that it would be recurring on every occasion, and renewing irritations, until it would kindle such mutual and mortal hatred as to render sepa ration preferable to eternal discord.

"The Missouri question, by a geographical line of division, is the most portentous one I ever contemplated. is ready to risk the Union for any chance of restoring his party to power, and wriggling himself to the head of it; nor is without his hopes, nor scrupulous as to the means of fulfilling them.

"The people of the North went blindfold into the snare, and followed their leaders for awhile with a zeal truly moral and laudable, until they became sensible that they were injuring instead of aiding the real interests of the slaves; that they had been used merely as tools for electioneering purposes, and that trick of hypocrisy then fell as quickly as it had been got up.

"I envy not the present generation the glory of throwing away the fruits of their fathers' sacrifices of life and fortune, and of rendering desperate the experiment which was to decide ultimately whether man is capable of selfgovernment. This treason against human hope will signalize their epoch in future history as the counterpart of the model of their predecessors.

"I regret that I am to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of them

selves by the generation of 1776 to acquire self-government and happiness for themselves is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be that I live not to weep

over it."

How accurately this venerable statesman foresaw the operation of the doings which he thus deplored, has been only too closely demonstrated by the course of subsequent events. To what absolute extent, either literally or in their spirit, his sad reflections and gloomy auguries have been fulfilled, need now be scarcely the object of inquiry. It may be justly remarked, that, if the seed of national dissension was sown, at the establishment of the first geographical line drawn in 1787, it was in the compromise measures of 1820–221 that the root of bitterness, growing out of that seed, was nurtured, from which sprang the future ills of the American Republic. For the Missouri Compromise was practically a shift to the future of a present embarrassment, by a bargain which either did not contemplate, or else did not regard the remote, but natural results likely to ensue, when affairs were ripe; and sure, in that event, to prove the occasion of a still more aggravated quarrel.

The North had made a practicable breach in that ordinary and equitable condition for the admission of States into the Union, that they be received “on an equal footing with the original States, in all respects whatever." Slave States. and free States' had originally formed the Union. For new States, therefore, an equal footing with the original States, in all respects whatever, could but be their admission, whether with or without slavery, indifferently. Southern men who voted for the measure, less provident of the future than Mr. Jefferson, can only have done so for the sake of quiet. But peace founded on expediency is not in its nature lasting. The Ordinance of 1787, though a violation of the principles of the Constitution, was of no real import in its merely practical application to the territory subject to its provisions. Nature

1 Massachusetts and others, which had provided for emancipation.

MR. JEFFERSON ON NORTHERN SEMINARIES.

55

uad originally established an ordinance paramount to it, but with which it coincided.

In the other case it was different. Into a part of the national territory, in which slave labor was thought indispensable, and lying contiguous to slave States, under the same line of latitude, immigrants with their domestic train of laborers would be sure to find their way. Their arbitrary exclusion, therefore, was by the enforced application of a doctrine, which competent and judicious statesmen have generally held to be quite outside of constitutional powers. Looking at the question from that point of view, it is certainly difficult to see how considerations founded upon mere moral sentiment, or arguments derived from policy alone, could be entitled to weight. In such a case, the fundamental law of the land can be the only rightful criterion. While that remained in force, legislative action in contravention of its provisions could be but sectional and unpatriotic; and, therefore, hostile to that section of the Union which rested under the ban of its restriction.

One other quotation from the correspondence of Mr. Jefferson should be added to the passages already given. It is of striking interest, and appropriately leads to a suggestion or two upon certain relations, other than political, which existed at the period of the latter compromise between the North and the South. In a letter to a friend, he says:

"The line of division lately marked out between the different portions of our Confederacy is such as will never, I fear, be obliterated, and we are now trusting to those who are against us in position and principle to fashion to their own form the minds and affections of our youth. If, as has been estimated, we send three hundred thousand dollars a year to Northern seminaries for the instruction of our own sons, then we must have five hundred of our sons imbibing opinions and principles in discord with those of their own country. This canker is eating on the vitals of our existence, and, if not arrested at once, will be beyond remedy.”

1

In this particular respect, however, the views of the venerable writer were far less sound than on some other

1 Letter to General Breckinridge, Feb. 11, 1821.

occasions. There was very little danger that the sons of Southern families would imbibe any prejudice against the slave system at their homes, among the young men with whom they chiefly associated at the colleges of the North. In those institutions, at the period in question, and in the existing condition of public sentiment among the better educated classes at the North, it may be doubted whether such subjects of speculation had many charms for the youthful mind. Probably, the students from the free States knew little, and thought little, on the subject of slavery. It appears by the annual catalogue of Harvard College, that, in the year 1820, there were no less than fifty youths from various Southern States in its list of undergraduates, amounting altogether to two hundred and eighty-six. It is not improbable that they would be found in, at least, a similar proportion at Yale and Princeton, since the seminary at Cambridge was situated so much farther North. If Mr. Jefferson's computation were correct, the proportion must have been still greater in those two colleges, or the distribution may have been more extensive.

The effect of the temporary residence of these young persons in such institutions of learning was just the reverse of that which he imagined. Many of the dearest ties of friendship which earth affords were there formed, between them and their Northern classmates, which afterwards withstood all the mutations of diverse ways, and the chilling effect of time and distance, and lasted unaltered during their common lives. Doubtless, the sectional tendencies of many at the South, who held back during the late war, were more or less repressed by the influence of their early associations with New England college life; and doubtless, also, the national patriotism of many at the North, who reverenced their whole country, was warmed and invigorated by the remembrance of their Southern friends, in days before worldly thoughts and things had subdued the freshness of generous sentiment and feeling. Many of those young men, from both departments of the land, were sure to exert no little influence, in

THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR FOR WHITE MEN'S LIBERTY. 57

concert, upon future public affairs. Those from the South were even more likely than the others to take a leading part in politics, for they were generally the sons of men of fortune, and frequently of those already known in political life, and were less subject to general competition for office than ere their contemporaries in the Northern States.

There were other causes at work, tending strongly to promote a better state of feeling among the widely diffused population of the country. The Roman historian tells us of a primitive people, remote from the imperial city, to whom every thing which was unknown seemed wonderful. Owing to some peculiarities of character and education among the inhabitants of the extreme North, and to a total ignorance of the condition of things at the South, whatever was not familiar to them, and which they did not understand at all, appeared to them simply and unqualifiedly objectionable. Whatever home instruction they had received upon the subject was calculated still further to influence their prejudices. There had been a vast deal of enthusiastic declamation against “chains and fetters," during the Revolutionary War, and upon many anniversaries after it ended; and the common mind at the North found it difficult to discriminate be tween the metaphorical enslavement of white men, though now released from that thraldom, and the practical, stillexisting, bondage of the blacks. They forgot, that during the whole war for freedom, negro slavery had been kept up, as usual, by the champions of liberty, and remained in the same coudition after the deliberate establishment of a free constitution.

error.

In a word, hating the abstract idea of slavery, they conceived that all mankind were entitled to, and qualified for the enjoyment of liberty. Assuredly, this was a radical Those who mistake liberty for an end, instead of a means, leave out of the reckoning its true aim, and the whole body of its uses. They forget that it is a good only, as a sign of order, safety, and the opportunity of improvement. They are like those who should cheat themselves with the