5303. MISSOURI, Admission of.—
I rejoice
that * * * Missouri is at length a
member of our Union. Whether the question
it excited is dead, or only sleepeth, I do not
know. I see only that it has given resurrection
to the Hartford Convention men. They
have had the address, by playing on the honest
feelings of our former friends, to seduce them
from their kindred spirits, and to borrow their
weight into the Federal scale. Desperate of
regaining power under political distinctions,
they have adroitly wriggled into its seat under
the auspices of morality, and are again
in the ascendency from which their sins had
hurled them. * * * I still believe that
the Western extension of our Confederacy
will insure its duration, by overruling local
factions, which might shake a smaller association.—
To Henry Dearborn. Washington ed. vii, 215.
Ford ed., x, 191.
(M.
1821)
