mits, knocked at the door of the Union for admission, almost
the entire representation of the non-slaveholding States objected. A
fearful and angry struggle instantly followed. This alarmed thinking
men more than any previous question, because, unlike all the former,
it divided the country by geographical lines. Other questions had their
opposing partisans in all localities of the country and in almost every
family, so that no division of the Union could follow such without a
separation of friends to quite as great an extent as that of opponents.
Not so with the Missouri question. On this a geographical line could be
traced, which in the main would separate opponents only. This was the
danger. Mr. Jefferson, then in retirement, wrote:

"I had for a long time ceased to read newspapers or to pay any attention
to public affairs, confident they were in good hands and content to be a
passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant. But this
momentous question, like a firebell in the night, awakened and filled
me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is
hushed, indeed, for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final
sentence. A geographical line coinciding with a marked principle, moral
and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men,
will never be obliterated, and every irritation will mark it deeper and
deeper. I can say with conscious truth that there is not a man on earth
who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy
reproach in any practicable way.

"The cession of that kind of property--for it is so misnamed--is a
bagatelle which would not cost me a second thought if in that way a
general emancipation and expatriation could be effected, and gradually and
with due sacrifices I think it might be. But as it is, we have the wolf by
the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in
one scale, and self-preservation in the other."

Mr. Clay was in Congress, and, perceiving the danger, at once engaged his
whole energies to avert it. It began, as I have said, in 1819; and it did
not terminate till 1821. Missouri would not yield the point; and Congress
that is, a majority in Congress--by repeated votes showed a determination
not to admit the State unless it should yield. After several failures,
and great labor on the part of Mr. Clay to so present the question that a
majority could consent to the admission,