5318. MISSOURI QUESTION, Slavery extension.—[further continued].
Our anxieties in this
quarter [the South] are all concentrated in
the question, what does the Holy Alliance in
and out of Congress mean to do with us on
the Missouri question? And this, by-the-bye,
is but the name of the case, it is only the
John Doe or Richard Roe of the ejectment.
The real question, as seen in the States afflicted
with this unfortunate population, is,
are our slaves to be presented with freedom
and a dagger? For if Congress has the power
to regulate the conditions of the inhabitants
of the States, within the States, it will be but
another exercise of that power, to declare
that all shall be free. Are we then to
see again Athenian and Lacedemonian confederacies?
To wage another Peloponnesian
war to settle the ascendency between them?
Or is this the tocsin of merely a servile war?
That remains to be seen; but not, I hope, by
you or me.—
To John Adams. Washington ed. vii, 200.
Ford ed., x, 186.
(M.
Jan. 1821)
