5317. MISSOURI QUESTION, Slavery extension.—[continued].
A hideous evil, the magnitude
of which is seen, and at a distance
only, by the one party, and more sorely felt
and sincerely deplored by the other, from
the difficulty of the cure, divides us at this
moment too angrily. The attempt by one
party to prohibit willing States from sharing
the evil, is thought by the other to render
desperate, by accumulation, the hope of its
final eradication. If a little time, however,
is given to both parties to cool, and to dispel
their visionary fears, they will see that concurring
in sentiment as to the evil, moral and
political, the duty and interest of both is to
concur also in devising a practicable process
of cure. Should time not be given, and the
schism be pushed to separation, it will be
for a short term only; two or three years'
trial will bring them back, like quarrelling
lovers to renewed embraces, and increased
affections. The experiment of separation
would soon prove to both that they had
mutually miscalculated their best interests.—
To Richard Rush. Washington ed. vii, 182.
(M.
Oct. 1820)
