I thank you, dear Sir, for the copy you have been so kind as to send
me of the letter to your constituents on the Missouri question. It is
a perfect justification to them. I had for a long time ceased to read
newspapers, or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were
in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore
from which I am not distant. But this momentous question, like a
fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered
it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for
the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A
geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and
political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will
never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and
deeper. I can say, with conscious truth, that there is not a man on
earth who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this
heavy reproach, in any practicable way. The cession of that kind of
property (for so it is misnamed) is a bagatelle which would not cost
me a second thought, if, in that way, a general emancipation and
expatriation could be effected: and, gradually, and with due sacrifices,
I think it might be. But as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we
can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale,
and self-preservation in the other.
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