These men also said:  “Consequent on these erroneous views held by Thomas Jefferson and others, the settlement made as between the North and South has been wrong, from the beginning, It was wrong to close the Northwest Territory, embracing Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, against slavery.  So also it was wrong to close Kansas against this institution by what was called the Missouri Compromise Line, agreed upon on the admission of Missouri into the Union.”

So these men reasoned, and they said:  “Now we propose to go and take by the strong hand those rights of which we have been wrongfully deprived since the beginning of the American Government.  A little severity now—­a resolute seizing on our rights now, in this golden opportunity—­will be worth more than the shedding of rivers of blood by and by.  Therefore the primary and rudimental legislation of this infant Territory will be worth everything to us in the final settlement of this question.  It is certain that the law is against us; but the law itself is wrong, and has been wrong from the beginning.  The right that belongs to us is the material and inalienable right of revolution.”

We have no right to assume that a majority of the people of Missouri held the sentiments we have here indicated:  probably they did not.  But the dissent was generally unspoken.  The men of this stamp commonly adopted the policy of the man with whom I had just parted.  But there was dissent in some cases, bitter and vehement, followed sometimes by bloodshed.

Before I had gone to Iowa, and while I yet lived in Ohio, I had visited Kentucky.  An Ohio colony had gone down into Kentucky and located in the counties of Wayne and Pulaski, on the Cumberland River.  A brother of mine had gone with them, and I had made him a visit.  I thought then, and think now, that there is no region on which the sun shines, more desirable to live in than the region of the Cumberland Mountains.  At Crab Orchard I found a man that was born in the State of New York.  He had been a soldier at Hull’s surrender, at Detroit, in the war of 1812, with Great Britain.  From Detroit he had made his way into Kentucky, had married a rich wife with many slaves, and had become a vehement partisan for slavery.  But because he was born in the same State with myself, and because I could tell him much about that people that were once his people, he was glad to have me stop with him.  Being old and choleric, he would go off into a fierce passion against the abolitionists.  He would say:  “These men are thieves!  Our niggers are our property, and they steal our property.  They might as well steal our horses.”  After awhile he would begin to talk about his children.  He would say:  “These niggers are ruining my children!  My girls are good for nothing!  They can not help themselves!  They are so helpless they can not even pick up a needle.  And my boys!  These niggers are ruining my boys!  My boys won’t work!” And then he would go on to tell the nameless vices the young men of the city were drawn into through their intimacy with the blacks.  I thought, but did not say, “My dear sir, if slavery is working such a ruin on your own children, would not the abolitionists be doing you a kindness if they would steal every nigger you have got?”