. The way I hope is preparing, under the auspices of
heaven, for a total emancipation." But slavery grew stronger, instead of
weaker, under the compromise, and from time to time required more
compromises, and more surrenders. The Missouri Compromise, the
Annexation of Texas, and the Fugitive Slave Law, each extorted under
threats of the "dissolution of the Union," are examples. But no
compromise ever wrenched an inch of territory from the clutch of slavery
and gave it to freedom. Freedom _held_ the whole Northwest, by the
_un_-compromising requirement: "There shall be neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude" there!

3. Another strong plea for compromise is the hopelessness of gaining
anything better. This was the consideration urged so vehemently against
the early Abolitionists. It was said: "Slavery is wrong--that we all
admit--but it is a fixed fact, invulnerable, backed up by wealth,
talent, pride and political influence, and all opposition is vain. You
Abolitionists are mere sentimentalists, visionaries, doctrinaires." This
had great influence with the indifferent, the timid, and especially with
those who vaunt themselves as "practical men," who boast that they care
nothing for abstractions, but take business views of things. This plea
and these men were largely influential in carrying forward some of the
most iniquitous compromises preceding the war.

ECCLESIASTICAL COMPROMISES ABOUT SLAVERY.

This glance at the compromises in the political history of the nation
prepares us to look at those in the Church. Here, too, compromises on
the subject of slavery were made as in the State, and generally from the
same motives and always with the same disappointing results.

The Churches before and during the revolutionary period were emphatic in
their utterances against slavery. Their accredited leaders and official
convocations used such terms as these: Methodist, "The sum of all
villanies;" Presbyterian, "Man stealers: stealers of men are those who
bring off slaves or freemen and keep, sell or buy them;" Baptist,
"Slavery is a violent deprivation of the rights of nature;"
Congregational, "Slavery is in every instance wrong, unrighteous,
oppressive, a great and crying sin, there being nothing equal to it on
the face of the earth."

But there were slaveholders in the churches, and as population increased
they became more numerous and naturally chafed under such denunciations.
But their impatience reached its climax u