Nevertheless, when every right of property and every right of government was at stake,
Virginia took counsel, not of her fears, but of her patriotic love for the
Union, which she had done so much to enlarge; for which she had stripped herself of the whole northwest territory.
She had given not principalities, but empires to the general government.
What those who now condemned her had sacrificed for the
Union was far less legible.
Her voice was raised for peace.
She pointed out that every practical issue which could possibly arise on the slavery question had been settled by the inexorable logic of events; that
Kansas had already prohibited slaves, and it might be added negroes; that no territory north of
Kansas could possibly be expected to do otherwise, but to allay apprehension she reiterated the proffer of the
South to stipulate against admission on such terms.
The relation to this subject of the territory south of
Kansas was fixed by the compromise of 1850, and it was not the
South which desired to disturb it.
Virginia said to the
North: ‘The only thing left open to possible agitation the
South will stipulate in your favor.’
The
North claimed all the territories for their citizens and their institutions.
The South was content to ask no more than the right of ingress into a part or one-half of the territories for her citizens and their property.
The South said: ‘You blame us for effacing from the statute-book the dead letter of the
Missouri compromise.
Very well, then; we will restore that letter in form which you have so invariably repudiated in fact.
Lawless as we deem it, for the sake of the
Union we will seek to make it lawful by consent;’ and the offer was disdained.
The answer to the Peace Conference was the fleet of war despatched to
Charleston; the proclamation of the 15th of April, 1851, the transfer of the construction of the
Constitution from the bench to the bayonet; the silence of the laws by the arms of the
United States.
Not until the compact of the
Constitution was shattered beyond the reach of surgery by the summons of the
North to armed war against the
South did
Virginia declare that an order of things ‘outside the
Constitution’ was no compact for her.
