aking the office of President, his watchword
was, "We are all Federalists, we are all Republicans"; and the two
principles of universal freedom and equality, and the right of each
State to regulate its own internal domestic affairs, became not so much
the doctrine of a party as the accepted creed of the nation. In his
administration of affairs, Jefferson did not suffer one power of the
General Government to be weakened. No one man did so much as he towards
consolidating the Union.

But the question of Slavery was not solved. The purchase of Louisiana
increased the States in which slaves were tolerated; the settlement of
the Northwest strengthened the power of freedom; but as yet there had
been no fracture in public opinion. Missouri asked to be admitted to the
Union, and it was found, that, without any party organization, without
formal preparation, a majority of the House of Representatives desired
to couple its admission with the condition that it should emancipate its
slaves. That slavery was evil was still the undivided opinion of the
nation; but it was perceived that the friends of freedom had missed the
proper moment for action,--that Congress had tolerated slavery in
Missouri as a Territory, and were thus inconsistent in claiming to
suppress slavery in the State; and they escaped from the difficulty by
what was called a Compromise. It was agreed that for the future slavery
should never be carried to the north of the southern boundary of
Missouri; and this was interpreted by the South as the devoting of all
the territory south of that line to the owners of slaves.

From that day Slavery became the foundation of a political party, under
the guise of a zeal for the rights of States. It began to be perceptible
at the next Presidential election; but Calhoun, who was willing to be
considered a candidate for the Presidency, was still as decidedly for
the Union as John Quincy Adams or Webster. Walking one day with Seaton
of the "Intelligencer" on the banks of the Potomac, Seaton dissuaded him
from being at that day a candidate for the Presidency, giving as a
reason, that, in case of success and reelection, he would go out of the
public service in the vigor of life. "I will, at the end of my second
term, go into retirement and write my memoirs," was Calhoun's answer: a
proof that at that time Disunion had not crossed his mind.

The younger Adams had been undoubtedly at the South the candidate of the
Union party. The inc