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such majority, as to do anything against slavery not inhibited by the Constitution if the representatives from the North should unite.
Hence the slave States, in order to preserve the balance of power in the Senate, entered into the far-famed Missouri compromise, by which Maine, as a free State, was to be taken from Massachusetts, and Missouri, as a slave State, from the Louisiana purchase, and both were to be admitted into the Union at the same time.
Slavery was abolished in the Southwestern American colonies of Great Britain by an Act of Parliament passed in 1833.
This act emancipated all slaves from the first day of August, 1834, and appropriated the sum of twenty million pounds sterling to compensate the owners for their loss of services.
But it held the emancipated person as an apprentice for six years, bound to give forty-five hours each week to the service of his master.
About this time an anti-slavery agitation was begun in this country, originating substantially in New England, and led by William Lloyd Garrison of Massachusetts.
It spread rapidly over the whole country North and West, many journals being founded for its advocacy.
This agitation looked to no compensation to the master, but held that slavery was wholly unconstitutional; and that if the Constitution did recognize and protect it, then the Constitution was a “covenant with hell and a league with death.”
In several States, notably in Massachusetts, societies were organized for the purpose of inducing and aiding slaves to flee to the North and thence into Canada, from which they could not be extradited.
State legislation was attempted by which the Fugitive Slave Law, then existing, was to be rendered nugatory and useless.
Retaliatory measures were introduced at the South.
The time of Congress was largely spent in discussing and legislating on matters connected with the slavery question.
The balance of power after the adoption of the Missouri compromise in 1820--that is, as many free States as slave States coming into the Union--gave an equal number of senators upon the slave question.
Maine, free, carved out of Massachusetts, was admitted March 3, 1820, and was offset by Missouri, slave, March 2, 1821; Arkansas, slave, June 15, 1836, by Michigan, free, Jan. 26, 1837; Florida, slave, March 3, 1845, by Iowa, free, March 3, 1845; Texas, slave, annexed as a State March 1, 1845, by Wisconsin, free, March 3,
A. M. Thayer and Co. 1892.
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