John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[115] to silence the discussion of slavery in the free States, and served notice that such a limitation as this upon free speech and a free press could never be enforced. It admonished Mr. Clay, whom it had always admired, that he underrated the force of Northern repugnance to the fugitive-slave law.

It was during the closing month of this year, too, that the Tribune published an editorial in which we find the following:

... If we regard the several States as sovereignties and the Union as a confederacy, the right to secede from that Union in case of the perversion of its powers to the vital injury of one or more of the high contracting parties, would seem to be a legitimate inference from the premises. ...

It is not known positively who wrote those lines, but as Greeley had returned from Europe, and was again actively engaged as the responsible editor of the great antislavery journal, it is assumed that he was their author, or at least had personally permitted their utterance. It should be observed, however, that the premises as stated were never admitted by any considerable number of Northern men, but that the great majority of them contended strenuously that the Constitution provided for a perpetual and indestructible Union, from which no State had a right to withdraw. The editorial is mentioned here, not for the purpose of anticipating or discussing the great question raised by it, but merely to show the drift of opinion at that early day, and to point out the fact that it was probably Greeley and not Dana who made even this small concession to the doctrine of State rights, which was then coming so ominously to the front throughout the South.

Notwithstanding the Tribune's clear and explicit declaration