restriction, was finally accomplished by the addition to the bill
of a section for ever prohibiting slavery in all that portion of
the Louisiana Territory lying north of thirty-six degrees and
thirty minutes, north latitude, except Missouri--by implication
leaving the portion south of that line open to settlement either
with or without slaves.

This provision, as an offset to the admission of the new State
without restriction, constituted the celebrated Missouri Compro-
mise. It was reluctantly accepted by a small majority of the
Southern members. Nearly half of them voted against it,
under the conviction that it was unauthorized by the Constitu-
tion, and that Missouri was entitled to determine the question
for herself, as a matter of right, not of bargain or concession.
Among those who thus thought and voted were some of the
wisest statesmen and purest patriots of that period. ^*

This brief retrospect may have sufficed to show that the
question of the right or wrong of the institution of slavery was
in no wise involved in the earlier sectional controversies. Nor
was it otherwise in those of a later period, in which it was the
lot of the author of these memoirs to bear a part. They were

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