more
diligently watch our shores, and the naval force may be employed on
the coast of Africa, and on the ocean, to break up the slave trade--but
these means will not put an end to it; so long as markets are open for
the purchase of slaves, so long they will be supplied;--and so long as
we permit the existence of slavery in our new and frontier States,
so long slave markets will exist. The plea of humanity is equally
inadmissible, since no one who has ever witnessed the experiment will
believe that the condition of slaves is made better by the breaking
up, and separation of their families, nor by their removal from the old
States to the new ones; and the objection to the provision of the bill,
excluding slavery from Missouri, is equally applicable to the like
prohibitions of the old States: these should be revoked, in order that
the slaves now confined to certain States, may, for their health and
comfort, and multiplication, be spread over the whole Union.

Slavery cannot exist in Missouri without the consent of Congress; the
question may therefore be considered, in certain lights, as a new one,
it being the first instance in which an inquiry respecting slavery, in a
case so free from the influence of the ancient laws, usages, and manners
of the country, has come before the Senate.

The territory of Missouri is beyond our ancient limits, and the inquiry
whether slavery shall exist there, is open to many of the arguments that
might be employed, had slavery never existed within the United States.
It is a question of no ordinary importance. Freedom and slavery are the
parties which stand this day before the Senate; and upon its decision
the empire of the one or the other will be established in the new State
which we are about to admit into the Union.

If slavery be permitted in Missouri with the climate, and soil, and in
the circumstances of this territory, what hope can be entertained that
it will ever be prohibited in any of the new States that will be formed
in the immense region west of the Mississippi? Will the co-extensive
establishment of slavery and of the new States throughout this region,
lessen the dangers of domestic insurrection, or of foreign aggression?
Will this manner of executing the great trust of admitting new States
into the Union, contribute to assimilate our manners and usages, to
increase our mutual affection and confidence, and to establish that
equality of benefits and burdens which constitutes t