George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[200] recognized and profited by serfdom and slavery, and after having planted these very negroes here, two centuries ago, against our will; we may say this, I have no doubt, and gird at her well, in sundry well-written diplomatic notes; but if it grows more serious, and there is talk of fighting about it, we shall be a great deal too moral at the North to belong to the war-party. Considering how direct taxes have been managed, we feel fully justified in being thus strict constructionists about this matter. The most we shall sustain you in doing, will be in making a good bargain for the protection of black property, going through those ugly Bahama shoals Webster talks about, if you are willing to set the matter on the coast of Africa right, so that we shall not favor the slave-trade as we do now, to our disgrace before all Christendom. Indeed, this is likely enough to be the whole amount of the game you are playing. Webster's letter is very able; so able that, while it convinces many, it strengthens the Abolitionists, by showing how very disagreeable is the true constitutional ground, which hangs a man as a pirate, for having been willing to jeopard his life in order to obtain the freedom in which that same Constitution says he was born.

The moral I draw from all this is, that as you have nothing to hope as a Whig party, at Washington, I trust you will make up your minds to do your duty to the country, in such a way as to make it plain that you mean to do it, being beyond fear or favor.

Yours faithfully,

To Rev. W. E. Channing, Boston.

I am rejoiced to hear what you tell me, of Chancellor Kent's opinion, and I wish the Supreme Court of the United States might declare it to be the law of the land. On the subject of our relations with the South, and its slavery, we must — as I have always thought-do one of two things; either keep honestly the bargain of the Constitution, as it shall be interpreted by the authorities to whom we have agreed to confide its interpretation,—of which the Supreme Court of the United States is the chief and safest,—or declare honestly that we can no longer in our consciences consent to keep it, and break it. I therefore rejoice at every legal decision which limits and restrains the curse of slavery; both because each such restriction is in itself so great a good, and because it makes it more easy to preserve the Union. I fear the recent decision, in the case of Pennsylvania and Maryland, works the