Judge Marshall, presiding in the United States Circuit Court in Richmond, this year, held that in suits brought by a foreigner against the citizen of a State, the federal courts possessed a controlling power over the State courts. The opinion was ably controverted by Judge Roane in a series of articles published in the Richmond Enquirer over the signature of Hampden. Roane forwarded these to Mr. Jefferson, who replied (September 6th) fully concurring in his views on the question decided by the court and advancing beyond them in others. Understanding Roane to admit that the judiciary was the last resort for explaining the Constitution "in relation to the other departments of the Government," he earnestly reasserted what had been a standing doctrine of his own Administration, that "each department was truly independent of the others, and had an equal right to decide for itself what is the meaning of the Constitution in the cases submitted to its action." His letter contains several interesting arguments and citations on this important question.

Mr. Jefferson had two brief but serious attacks of disease in 1819. The first terminated near the beginning of autumn. The second, a spasmodic stricture of the ilium, came upon him on the 7th of October, and threatened his life. The crisis was favorably passed on the fourth day, but a dose of calomel produced salivation, and he suffered much from its disagreeable consequences. He was on horseback again, however, before the close of the month.

Several literary and critical letters during the year, show that his mental activity was unimpaired, and that it was kept. in constant exercise.

We find Mr. Jefferson's first allusion to the "Missouri question" in a letter to Mr. Adams of December 10th. Missouri had applied for the usual permission to form a State constitution, at the preceding session of Congress. A motion by a northern member to insert a clause in the act, prohibiting the further introduction of slaves into the new State, and granting freedom to the children of slaves already there, on reaching the age of twenty-five, had prevailed in the House, but had been struck out in the Senate. The House refused to concur, and the Senate to recede; and so the bill was lost. Menaces of disunion were freely thrown out in the debate. The

next Congress was to assemble on the 6th of December (1819), and in the meantime, this agitating question spread to the State legislatures and popular masses, producing that excitement which would be expected where political and social feelings so deep, and interests so important were brought into collision.'

Four days after the meeting of Congress, Jefferson wrote to Adams:

"The banks, bankrupt law, manufactures, Spanish treaty, are nothing. These are occurrences which, like waves in a storm, will pass under the ship. But the Missouri question is a breaker on which we lose the Missouri country by revolt, and what more, God only knows. From the Battle of Bunker's Hill to the treaty of Paris we never had so ominous a question. It even damps the joy with which I hear of your high health, and welcomes to me the consequences of my want of it. I thank God that I shall not live to witness its issue. Sed hæc hactenus." 3

It is not necessary to record here the various propositions

1 The interests which the southern States had involved in the settlement of the question, are too obvious to require mention. Those in the northern States are thus described by an anti-slavery writer:

"The late discussions on the extension of slavery beyond the Mississippi, had roused up, as if from a long sleep, the anti-slavery sentiment of the North. The American convention for promoting the abolition of slavery, in abeyance since the abolition of the slave trade, revived, and reassembled once more at Philadelphia. But these speculative philanthropists, few and weak, would have been able to accomplish little had not the politicians come to their aid. Jealousy of southern domination had, as we have seen, made the northern Federalists dissatisfied with the purchase of Louisiana; it had led them to protest against the erection of the territory of Orleans into a State, and had moved the Hartford Convention to propose the abolition of the slave representation-a proposal quite as much, perhaps, as any suspected plots against the Union, the unpardonable sin of that body. This feeling had been shared, and, on more than one occasion, exhibited by the northern Democrats also, especially those of New York, who had reflected, not without some bitterness, on the political insignificance in which they had so long been held. The keeping out of new States, or the alteration of the Constitution as to the basis of representation-to which proposal of Massachusetts, reëchoed from Hartford, the other northern States had returned no answers at all, or unfavorable oneswere projects too hopeless, as well as too unpopular in their origin, to be renewed. The extension to the new territory, west of the Mississippi of the ordinance of 1787 against slavery, seemed to present a much more feasible method of accomplishing substantially the same object. This idea spreading with rapidity, still further obliterated old party lines, tending to produce at the North, a political union, for which the Federalists had so often sighed, similar to that which, prevailing throughout the South for the last twenty years, had given to that section so entire a control over the policy of the General Government, both foreign and domestic."-(Hildreth's Hist. of U. S. 2d Ser., vol. iii. p. 682.)

*

Otis of Massachusetts, who, at the last session, as well as on several occasions before, had exhibited his strong sympathy for the slaveholders, of which, indeed, he lived to give still further proofs, now on behalf of a northern ascendency and with the prospect of a new political party on that basis, exerted all his eloquence against them."-(Ib., p. 688.)

The delegate of Missouri had intimated this solution at the preceding session. * Mr. Adams's answer to this, was as follows:

The Missouri question, I hope, will follow the other waves under the ship, and do no harm. I know it is high treason to express a doubt of the perpetual duration of our vast American Empire, and our free institutions; and I say as devotedly as Father Paul, esto perpetua, but I am sometimes Cassandra enough to dream that another Hamilton and another Burr, might rend this mighty fabric in twain, or perhaps into a leash; and a few more choice spirits of the same stamp, might produce as many nations in North America as there are in Europe."

and counter propositions, which preceded the final action of Congress on the Act to authorize the people of the Missouri territory to form a constitution and State government.

A clause which prohibited Slavery in the new State, was struck out in the House of Representatives and the following proviso carried:

"Sec. 8. And be it further enacted, that in all the territory ceded by France to the United States, under the name of Louisiana, which lies north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude, not included within the limits of the State contemplated by this act, slavery and involuntary servitude, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the parties shall have been duly convicted, shall be, and is hereby, forever prohibited: Provided always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed, in any State or territory of the United States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service, as aforesaid."

The bill passed the Senate and was approved on the 6th of March, 1820:

Mr. Jefferson was originally opposed to the slavery-restriction clause of the bill-and equally so to the establishment of the "Missouri Compromise line," as it was called. We present his expressions on the subject together. He wrote to

J. C. Cabell, January 22d, 1820:

"If our Legislature does not heartily push our University, we must send our children for education to Kentucky or Cambridge. If, however, we are to go a begging anywhere for our education, I would rather it should be to Kentucky than to any other State, because she has more of the flavor of the old cask than any other. All the States but our own are sensible that knowledge is power. The Missouri question is for power."1

To H. Nelson, March 12th:

“I thank you, dear sir, for the information in your favor of the 4th instant, of the settlement, for the present, of the Missouri question. I am so completely withdrawn from all attention to public matters, that nothing less could arouse me than the definition of a geographical line, which on an abstract principle is to become the line of separation of these States, and to render desperate the hope that man can ever enjoy the two blessings of peace and self-government. The question sleeps for the present, but is not dead."

To Mark Langdon Hill, April 5th:

"I congratulate you on the sleep of the Missouri question. I wish I could say

The letter containing this is in neither edition of Mr. Jefferson's works. We find it in the History of the University of Virginia, soon to be more particularly noticed.

on its death, but of this I despair. The idea of a geographical line once suggested will brood in the minds of all those who prefer the gratification of their ungovernable passions to the peace and union of their country. If I do not contemplate this subject with pleasure, I do sincerely that of the independence of Maine and the wise choice they have made of General King in the agency of their affairs."

To William Short, April 13th:

Although I had laid down as a law to myself, never to write, talk, or even think of politics, to know nothing of public affairs, and therefore had ceased to read newspapers, yet the Missouri question aroused and filled me with alarm. The old schism of Federal and Republican threatened nothing, because it existed in every State, and united them together by the fraternism of party. But 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 separation preferable to eternal discord. I have been among the most sanguine in believing that our Union would be of long duration. I now doubt it much, and see the event at no great distance, and the direct consequence of this question; not by the line which has been so confidently counted on; the laws of nature control this; but by the Potomac, Ohio, Missouri, or more probably, the Mississippi upwards to our northern boundary. My only comfort and confidence is, that I shall not live to see this; and 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 experimennt which was to decide ultimately whether man is capable of self-government. This treason against human hope, will signalize their epoch in future history, as the counterpart of the medal of their predecessors."

To John Holmes, April 22d:

"I thank you, dear sir, for the copy you have been so kind as to send me of the letter to your constituents on the Missouri question. It is a perfect justification to them. I had for a long time ceased to read newspapers, or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant. But this momentous question, like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper. I can say, with conscious truth, that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in any practicable way. The cession of that kind of property, for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle which would not cost me a second thought, if, in that way, a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected: and, gradually, and with duc sacrifices, I think it might be. But as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and wo can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other. Of one thing I am certain, that as the passage of slaves from one state to another, would not make a slave of a single human being who

would not be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater surface would make them individually happier, and proportionally facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation, by dividing the burden on a greater number of coadjutors. An abstinence too, from this act of power, would remove the jealousy excited by the undertaking of Congress to regulate the condition of the different descriptions of men composing a State. This certainly is the exclusive right of every State, which nothing in the Constitution has taken from them and given to the General Government. Could Congress, for example, say, that the non-freemen of Connecticut shall be freemen, cr that they shall not emigrate into any other State?

"I regret that I am now to die in the belief, that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, 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. If they would but dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away, against an abstract principle more likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves, and of treason against the hopes of the world. To yourself, as the faithful advocate of the Union, I tender the offering of my high esteem and respect."

To William Pinkney, September 30th:

"The Missouri 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, a principle of personal not of local division, have changed their tack, and thrown out another barrel to the whale. They are taking advantage of the virtuous feelings of the people to effect a division of parties by a geographica line; they expect that this will insure them, on local principles, the majority they could never obtain on principles of Federalism; but they are still putting their shoulder to the wrong wheel; they are wasting Jeremiads on the miseries of slavery, as if we were advocates for it. Sincerity in their declamations should direct their efforts to the true point of difficulty, and unite their councils with ours in devising some reasonable and practicable plan of getting rid of it. Some of these leaders, if they could attain the power, their ambition would rather use it to keep the Union together, but others have ever had in view its separation. If they push it to that, they will find the line of separation very different from their 360 of latitude, and as manufacturing and navigating States, they will have quarrelled with their bread and butter, and I fear not that after a little trial they will think better of it, and return to the embraces of their natural and best friends. But this scheme of party I leave to those who are to live under its consequences. We who have gone before have performed an honest duty, by putting in the power of our successors a state of happiness which no nation ever before had within their choice. If that choice is to throw it away, the dead will have neither the power nor the right to control them. I must hope, nevertheless, that the mass of our honest and well-meaning brethren of the other States, will discover the use which designing leaders are making of their best feelings, and will see the precipice to which they are led, before they take the fatal leap. God grant it, and to you health and happiness."

To Richard Rush, October 20th:

"A hideous evil, the magnitude of which is seen, and at a distance only, by the