ust about entering into a war with England, and
the crisis was unpropitious for discussing questions that would create
divisions between different sections of the Union. We must wait till the
country was at peace. Thus it was that Louisiana was admitted without a
controversy.

Next followed, in 1817 and 1820, Mississippi and Alabama--admitted after
the example of Kentucky and Tennessee, without any contest.

Meantime, Florida had given some uneasiness to the slaveholders of the
neighboring states; and for their accommodation chiefly, a negociation
was set on foot by the government to purchase it.

Missouri was next in order in 1821. She could plead no privilege, on the
score of being part of one of the original states; the country too, was
relieved from the pressure of her late conflict with England; it was
prosperous and quiet; every thing seemed propitious to a calm and
dispassionate consideration of the claims of slaveholders to add props
to their system, by admitting indefinitely, new slave states to the
Union. Up to this time, the "EVIL" of slavery had been almost
universally acknowledged and deplored by the South, and its termination
(apparently) sincerely hoped for.[A] By this management its friends
succeeded in blinding the confiding people of the North. They thought
for the most part, that the slaveholders were acting in good faith. It
is not intended by this remark, to make the impression, that the South
had all along pressed the admission of new slave states, simply with a
view to the increase of its own relative power. By no means: slavery had
insinuated itself into favor because of its being mixed up with (other)
supposed benefits--and because its ultimate influence on the government
was neither suspected nor dreaded. But, on the Missouri question, there
was a fair trial of strength between the friends of Slavery and the
friends of the Constitution. The former triumphed, and by the prime
agency of one whose raiment, the remainder of his days, ought to be
sackcloth and ashes,--because of the disgrace he has continued on the
name of his country, and the consequent injury that he has inflicted on
the cause of Freedom throughout the world. Although all the different
Administrations, from the first organization of the government, had, in
the indirect manner already mentioned, favored slavery,--there had not
been on any previous occasion, a direct struggle between its pretensions
and the principles of liberty i