in Congress,
he wrote to a member of the House of Representatives, that "the
Missouri question is the most portentous one which has ever threatened
the Union. In the gloomiest hour of the Revolutionary war I never
had any apprehensions equal to those which I feel from this source."
Men on both sides of the controversy began to realize its significance
and to dread its probable results. They likened the partition of
the country by a geographical line unto the ancient agreement
between Abraham and Lot, where one should go to the right, and the
other to the left, with the certainty of becoming aliens, and the
possibility of becoming enemies.

THE MISSOURI ADJUSTMENT SATISFACTORY.

With the settlement of the Missouri question, the anti-slavery
agitation subsided as rapidly as it had arisen. This was a second
surprise to thinking men. The results can, however, be readily
explained. The Northern States felt that they had absolutely
secured to freedom a large territory west and north of Missouri.
The Southern States believed that they had an implied and honorable
understanding,--outside and beyond the explicit letter of the law,
--that new States south of the Missouri line could be admitted with
slavery if they desired. The great political parties then dividing
the country accepted the result and for the next twenty years no
agitation of the slavery question appeared in any political
convention, or affected any considerable body of the people.

Within that period, however, there grew up a school of anti-slavery
men far more radical and progressive than those who had resisted
the admission of Missouri as a slave State. They formed what was
known as the Abolition party, and they devoted themselves to the
utter destruction of slavery by every instrumentality which they
could lawfully employ. Acutely trained in the political as well
as the ethical principles of the great controversy, they clearly
distinguished between the powers which Congress might and might
not exercise under the limitations of the Constitution. They began,
therefore, by demanding the abolition of slavery in the District
of Columbia, and in all the national forts, arsenals, and dock-
yards, where, without question or cavil, the exclusive jurisdiction
belonged to Congress; they asked that Congress, under its constitutional
authority to regulate commerce between the States, would prohibit
the inter-State slave-tr