John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[126] nations. It spoke with contempt of Walker's evanescent republic of Lower California, and upon every suitable occasion it returned with vehemence to the denunciation of slavery as “imperious, encroaching, truculent, and belligerent.” It opposed with all its power the movement of Douglas to override and repeal the Missouri Compromise as a “breach of solemn compact between the North and the South, which would inevitably open the door to fresh and fierce agitation,” the commencement of which, it claimed, “could not be charged against the side of freedom.”

The year 1854 was taken up with similar discussions, in which it declared:

Slavery is an Ishmael. It is malevolent and malignant. It loves aggression, for when it ceases to be aggressive it stagnates and decays. It is the leper of modern civilization, but a leper whom no cry of “unclean” will keep from intrusion into uninfected company.

It denounced “the rascals at Washington,” who “were plotting the surrender to slavery of the free territory west of the Mississippi” as the legitimate outcome of Pierce's election by the Democrats to the presidency. It brought forward every argument it could formulate against Douglas and his Nebraska bill, as intended to put into the hands of the dominant party, and of the settlers or “squatters” of the territory, sovereignty enough to make a slave State of what, under the Missouri Compromise, should have been forever dedicated to freedom. It denounced Pierce and Douglas, not only as confederates with each other, but as allies of the slave power in this unjustifiable scheme. Although successful in delaying its enactment into law, it failed, notwithstanding its extraordinary efforts, to defeat the measure.