Thus, it has happened that Mr. Whitney has been the innocent occasion of giving to slavery in this country its present importance—­of magnifying it into the great interest to which all others must yield.  How he was rewarded by the South—­especially by the planters of Georgia—­the reader may see by consulting Silliman’s Journal for January, 1832, and the Encyclopedia Americana, article, WHITNEY.

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APPENDIX E.

It is impossible, of course, to pronounce with precision, how great would have been the effect in favor of emancipation, if the effort to resist the admission of Missouri as a slaveholding state had been successful.  We can only conjecture what it would have been, by the effect its admission has had in fostering slavery up to its present huge growth and pretensions.  If the American people had shown, through their National legislature, a sincere opposition to slavery by the rejection of Missouri, it is probable at least—­late as it was—­that the early expiration of the ‘system’ would, by this time, have been discerned by all men.

When the Constitution was formed, the state of public sentiment even in the South—­with the exception of South Carolina and Georgia, was favorable to emancipation.  Under the influence of this public sentiment was the Constitution formed.  No person at all versed in constitutional or legal interpretation—­with his judgment unaffected by interest or any of the prejudices to which the existing controversy has given birth—­could, it is thought, construe the Constitution, in its letter, as intending to perpetuate slavery.  To come to such a conclusion with a full knowledge of what was the mind of this nation in regard to slavery, when that instrument was made, demonstrates a moral or intellectual flaw that makes all reasoning useless.

Although it is a fact beyond controversy in our history, that the power conferred by the Constitution on Congress to “regulate commerce with foreign nations” was known to include the power of abolishing the African slave-trade—­and that it was expected that Congress, at the end of the period for which the exercise of that power on this particular subject was restrained, would use it (as it did) with a view to the influence that the cutting off of that traffic would have on the “system” in this country—­yet, such has been the influence of the action of Congress on all matters with which slavery has been mingled—­more especially on the Missouri question, in which slavery was the sole interest—­that an impression has been produced on the popular mind, that the Constitution of the United States guaranties, and consequently perpetuates, slavery to the South.  Most artfully, incessantly, and powerfully, has this lamentable error been harped on by the slaveholders, and by their advocates in the free states.  The impression