perty in Slaves to any
part of the National domain won by the arms or purchased by the money
of the whole country, was a violation of the compact entered into at
the formation of the Government, guaranteeing to the citizens of all the
States the same rights and privileges.

They also complained that under this arrangement the Free-Soilers gained
control of 1,238,025 square miles of the Nation's territory, while
Slavery only had 609,023 square miles, or less than half so much. This
complaint, which seemed so forceful to the Pro-Slaveryites, appeared as
rank impudence to their opponents, since it placed Slavery on the same
plane with Freedom.

8

The great State, however, did not flourish in accordance with the
expectations based upon its climate, natural resources and central
position. The tide of immigration paused before her borders, or swept
around under colder skies to Iowa and Minnesota, or to the remote
prairies of Kansas and Nebraska. Careless as the average home-seeker
might seem as to moral and social questions so long as he found fertile
land at cheap prices, yet he appeared reluctant to raise his humble
cabin on soil that had the least taint of Slavery. In spite of her long
frontage on the two greatest rivers of the continent, and which were
its main highways; in spite of skies and soils and rippling streams
unsurpassed on earth; in spite of having within her borders the great
and growing city of St. Louis, the Metropolis of the Mississippi Valley,
Missouri in 1860, after 40 years of Statehood, had only 1,182,012
people, against 1,711,951 in Illinois, 1,350,428 in Indiana, 674,913
in Iowa, 172,023 in Minnesota, 2,329,511 in Ohio, 749,113 in Michigan,
775,881 in Wisconsin, with nearly 150,000 in Kansas and Nebraska.

More than a million settlers who had crossed the Mississippi within
a few years had shunned her contaminated borders for the free air of
otherwise less attractive localities.

Nor had the Slaveholders gone into the country in the numbers that were
expected. Less than 20,000 had settled there, which was a small showing
against nearly 40,000 in Kentucky and 55,000 in Virginia. All these had
conspicuously small holdings. Nearly one-third of them owned but one
slave, and considerably more than one-half had less than five. Only one
man had taken as many as 200 slaves into the State.

9

The Census of 1860 showed Missouri to rank eleventh among the Slave
States, according to the following ta