and agitation over peace and tranquillity; and I pray to Almighty God that it may not, in consequence of the inauspicious result, lead to the most unhappy and disastrous consequences to our beloved country."

REMARKS.

1. The South felt injured by the efforts made by the North to exclude her institutions from the territories and the new States, on the ground of her unworthiness. She remembered the efforts of the North to prevent Missouri from being admitted into the Union upon an equal footing with the other States. She not only felt injured but also insulted by these efforts, and by the language used in Congress by Northern men, and generally by the Northern press. The Southern States could not find any title-deed by which the landed estate was entailed upon the North, while the other members of the family were to be dismissed dowerless, and upbraided.

2. Portions of the North had endeavored to deprive the South of her slave representation, by proposing an alteration of the Constitution.

3. Large portions of the people of the North refused to deliver up fugitive slaves on the claim of their masters; and by thus refusing to perform their part of the stipulation, freed the South from its full obligations to keep the Constitution in its relation to them, as violators of the Constitution. Some of the States passed bills designed to obstruct the recovery of fugitive slaves. Pennsylvania, in 1780, passed an act of comity, allowing masters to bring their slaves into the State, and sojourn there six months, without forfeiting them. Pennsylvania in time became intolerant, and repealed that act. New York also repealed her sojournment act, by which the master was allowed to sojourn in the State nine months with his slaves, without subjecting them to emancipation. The sentiments of the people had been such in the Northern States, that it was perfectly safe for an owner of slaves, on visiting the North, to bring such of them with him as he needed, without any intermeddling to deprive him of their services. That liberal and national sentiment was now giving place to an intolerant, jealous, and inter

meddling spirit. The present writer distinctly remembers the time when Southern men brought on their slaves to Connecticut for a temporary sojournment, without experiencing any embarrassment in respect to their slaves, or any indignity to themselves. The present writer also remembers that afterwards, when an intolerant spirit became rife in New England, Southern men who brought their slaves simply on a visit to their friends and relatives for a few weeks, were informed that slaveholders were abhorred of God and despised of men; while arguments and persuasions were dishonorably addressed to their slaves, to entice them away from their masters.

4. Slave-stealing organizations were encouraged in the Northern States, so that by their agency, with the connivance of Northern men, the South lost a large number of slaves and a great amount of property annually, through what was called the underground railroad.

5. Southern clergymen were excluded from Northern pulpits, and Southern Christians from Northern communion tables, and Southern students were made uncomfortable by the intolerance of the abolition spirit of the North. In one of the Northern colleges, a respectable Southern clergyman was invited to preach on the Sabbath in the college chapel. Thereupon certain abolitionists among the students addressed a petition to the president, requesting that the clergyman should be excluded from the pulpit, after he had been invited by the proper authority to occupy it. By this arrogant conduct of these students, who were wise in their own conceits above their teachers, the college was thrown into a state of violent fermentation, and the Southern clergyman felt himself constrained to decline fulfilling his engagement. In justice to that college, it should be added, that the students in all the classes, after discussing the bearing and nature of the petition for something like half a day in a public meeting, passed a vote that the president of the college, who was likewise Professor of Divinity, was authorized to supply the pulpit for the instruction of the students as he should see fit, without being controlled by the intermeddling of the students, thus censuring the petitioners. It should be added, that the invitation to the clergyman was not withdrawn by the president, or the officer whose place the Southern gentleman was to fill on that Sabbath.

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6. Incendiary publications, adapted to produce insurrection among the slaves, had been sent by Northern abolitionists through the Southern States by mail.

7. While the fugitive slave bill was under consideration in the Senate, Mr. DAVIS, of Massachusetts, moved to amend the bill in such a way as to protect free negroes going to Southern ports, against seizure and imprisonment. Such persons had been seized and imprisoned in Charleston, S. C., and elsewhere, under State laws, much to the dissatisfaction of Northern States, where these imprisoned negroes were considered as citizens of the United States, because they were citizens of some of the Northern States. Massachusetts, the acknowledged champion of the North, resolved to try conclusions with South Carolina on the constitutionality of those acts of the latter by which the negro citizens of the former had been imprisoned. For this purpose, Mr. SAMUEL HOAR was appointed by the Governor of Massachusetts, under the authority of the Legislature, as an agent to collect information concering those citizens of Massachusetts, who had been imprisoned under the laws of South Carolina, and also to prosecute one or more suits in behalf of any citizen thus imprisoned, for the purpose of having the legality of such imprisonment tried and determined in the Supreme Court of the United States. It was declared in the Senate of the United States, "that Massachusetts has been anxious to do one single thing, and nothing else, and that is, to submit this question to the tribunal which the Constitution has provided for its final settlement." If these "laws are decided to be constitutional acts, she will acquiesce in the decision." Massachusetts thus claimed that, by adopting negroes as her own citizens, they should be reckoned elsewhere throughout the country as citizens of the United States.

South Carolina, on the other hand, took the ground, that negroes are not citizens of the United States within the meaning of the Constitution, and that the emissary sent by Massachusetts for the avowed purpose of interfering with her institutions and disturbing her peace, should be expelled from her territory.

The mission of Mr. HOAR, and his expulsion, created bad blood in South Carolina and in Massachusetts. Massachusetts complained bitterly that she was not allowed by South Carolina

to try the constitutionality of her claim, that her free negro citizens should be considered as citizens of the United States. When the question was settled by the Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott decision, that negroes are not citizens of the United States within the meaning of the Constitution, did Massachusetts acquiesce in the decision?

8. There was great dissatisfaction in New England with the fugitive law, as there would have been with any law which would be efficacious in restoring fugitive slaves. The people of that section practically refused to obey the fugitive slave law of 1793, and also the law of 1850. When Mr. WEBSTER announced his intention of supporting a law for the more ef fectual reclamation of fugitive slaves, Mr. CALHOUN is said to have replied: "What if you do enact such a bill? The people of New England will not submit to it." The fugitive, Sims, was recovered by his owner, but at an expense to him, it was said, of $3,000, aided though he was by the General Government, and by some of the most able men of Boston. The fugitive, Burns, was recovered, but at an expense to the Government and his owner of as much as $30,000. The law has been practically a dead letter except in a few cases. Thus the South lost nearly all that it expected to gain by the Compromise Measures of 1850. The Northern States, in this respect, were not faithful to the Compromise Measures, as is proved by the personal liberty bills passed by different Legislatures, for the purpose of throwing obstacles in the way of reclaiming fugitive slaves. "The entire moral impossibility of effecting the forcible reclamation of fugitive slaves in New England may therefore be solemnly regarded as a fixed state of things; and the great problem to be solved by politicians and statesmen is, not how they can remove this state of things, but how they shall adapt the laws and institutions of the country to it." This language from a respectable pamphlet, published in 1850, expresses a sentiment that was common in New England at that time. Mr. WEBSTER exhorted Massachusetts to "conquer her prejudices" on this subject. New England needed the same exhortation, though not generally to the same extent, as Massachusetts.

9. What was the effect of the passage of the Compromise Measures upon the country? Salutary and quieting, at least for

a season.

The Senators, CASS, CLAY, COBB, DICKINSON, FOOTE, and others, who had promoted the compromise, were applauded by the country generally for their efforts to heal the sectional difficulties. Mr. CALHOUN had died, and Mr. WEBSTER had resigned his place for a seat in the cabinet, before the measures were passed. Patriotic and moderate men of both political parties were generally disposed to be satisfied with the compromises. The abolition wing of the Whig party and the abolition wing of the Democratic party at the North were not satisfied with the fugitive slave law, and objected to making the North a "slave-hunting ground," and with some intemperance of language denounced "slave-catchers." By their united efforts they influenced the Legislatures of several Northern States to pass unconstitutional personal liberty bills for the purpose, it would seem, of defeating the object of the fugitive slave bill, and thus violating their constitutional obligations.

The following resolution, with some others, passed by the Common Council of the city of Chicago, shows the temper of the times in certain sections of the Northern States. "Resolved, that the Senators and Representatives in Congress from the Free States, who aided and assisted in the passage of this infamous law, (the fugitive slave law,) and those who basely sneaked away from their seats, and thereby evaded the question, richly merit the reproach of all lovers of freedom, and are fit only to be ranked with the traitors, BENEDICT ARNOLD and JUDAS IsCARIOT, who betrayed his Lord and Master for thirty pieces of silver."

As the spirit indicated by this resolution prevailed extensively in the Northern States, so it showed itself in the enactment of personal liberty bills by State Legislatures; in the organized support of underground railroads for carrying off slaves to Canada; and in the rescue by Northern mobs of fugitives from the legal officers appointed by the General Government. Such an act of a mob the present writer once witnessed, standing within a few feet of the commissioner from whom the rescue was made.