with the public men of the country than I had supposed. Let me tell him, however, that a sneer from him at the mention of the name of Mr. Dane is in bad taste. It may well be a high mark of ambition, sir, either with the honorable gentleman or myself, to accomplish as much to make our names known to advantage, and remembered with gratitude, as Mr. Dane has accomplished. But the truth is, sir, I suspect that Mr. Dane lives a little too far north. He is of Massachusetts, and too near the north star to be reached by the honorable gentleman’s telescope. If his sphere had happened to range south of Mason and Dixon’s line, he might, probably, have come within the scope of his vision!
I spoke, sir, of the ordinance of 1787, which prohibited slavery in all future times north-west of the Ohio, as a measure of great wisdom and foresight, and one which had been attended with highly beneficial and permanent consequences. I supposed that on this point no two gentlemen in the Senate could entertain different opinions. But the simple expression of this sentiment has led the gentleman, not only into a labored defence of slavery in the abstract, and on principle, but also into a warm accusation against me, as having attacked the system of domestic slavery now existing in the Southern States. For all this there was not the slightest foundation in any thing said or intimated by me. I did not utter a single word which any ingenuity could torture into an attack on the slavery of the south. I said only that it was highly wise and useful in legislating for the north-western country, while it was yet a wilderness, to prohibit the introduction of slaves; and added, that I presumed, in the neighboring state of Kentucky, there was no reflecting and intelligent gentleman who would doubt that, if the same prohibition had been extended, at the same early period, over that commonwealth, her strength and population would, at this day, have been far greater than they are. If these opinions be thought doubtful, they are, nevertheless, I trust, neither extraordinary nor disrespectful. They attack nobody and menace nobody. And yet, sir, the gentleman’s optics have discovered, even in the mere expression of this sentiment, what he calls the very spirit of the Missouri question! He represents me as making an onset on the whole south, and manifesting a spirit which would interfere with and disturb their domestic condition. Sir, this injustice no otherwise surprises me than as it is done here, and done without the slightest pretence of ground for it. I say it only surprises me as being done here; for I know full well that it is and has been the settled policy of some persons in the south, for years, to represent the people of the north as disposed to interfere with them in their own exclusive and peculiar concerns. This is a delicate and sensitive point in southern feeling; and of late years it has always been touched, and generally with effect, whenever the object has been to unite the whole south against northern men or northern measures. This feeling, always carefully kept alive, and maintained at too intense a heat to admit discrimination or reflection, is a lever of great power in our political machine. It moves vast bodies, and gives to them one and the same direction. But the feeling is without adequate cause, and the suspicion which exists wholly groundless. There is not, and never has been, a disposition in the north to interfere with these interests of the south. Such interference has never been supposed to be within the power of government, nor has it been in any way attempted. It has always been regarded as a matter of domestic policy, left with the states themselves, and with which the federal government had nothing to do.
