Macon and Mr. Smith. The nays embraced every northern Senator, except the two Senators from Illinois, and one Senator from Rhode Island, and one from New Hampshire. And this, Sir, is the record of the first stage in the adoption of the Missouri Compromise. First openly announced and vindicated on the floor of the Senate by a distinguished southern statesman, it was forced on the North by an almost unanimous southern vote.
While things had thus culminated in the Senate, discussion was still proceeding in the other House on the original Missouri Bill. This was for a moment arrested by the reception from the Senate of the Maine Bill, embodying the Missouri Compromise. Upon this the debate was brief and the decision prompt. But here even at this stage, as at every other, a southern statesman intervenes. Mr. Smith, of Maryland, for many years an eminent Senator of that State, but at this time a Representative, while opposing the restriction of Missouri, vindicated the prohibition of slavery in the Territories, and thus practically accepted the Compromise.
"Mr. S. Smith said that he rose principally with a view to state his understanding of the proposed amendment, viz.: That it retained the boundaries of Missouri as delineated in the bill; that it prohibited the admission of slaves west of the west line of Missouri and north of the north line; that it did not interfere with the Territory of Arkansas, or the uninhabited land west thereof. He thought the proposition not exceptionable, but doubted the propriety of its forming a part of the bill. He considered the power of Congress over the Territory as supreme, un-
