EXTENSION OF THE MISSOURI BOUNDARY.
This was a measure of great moment to Missouri and full of
difficulties in itself, and requiring a double process to accomplish
it--an act of Congress to extend the boundary, and an Indian treaty
to remove the Indians to a new home. It was to extend the existing
boundary of the State so as to include a triangle between the
existing line and the Missouri River, large enough to form seven
counties of the first class, and fertile enough to sustain the
densest population. The difficulties were threefold: 1. To make
still larger a State which was already one of the largest in the
Union. 2. To remove Indians from a possession which had just been
assigned them in perpetuity. 3. To alter the Missouri compromise
line in relation to slave territory, and thereby convert free soil
into slave soil. The two first difficulties were serious--the third
formidable: and in the then state of the public mind in relation
to slave territory, this enlargement of a great slave State, and
by converting free soil into slave, and impairing the compromise
line, was an almost impossible undertaking, and in no way to be
accomplished without a generous co-operation from the members of the
free States. They were a majority in the House of Representatives,
and no act of Congress could pass for altering the compromise line
without their aid: they were equal in the Senate, where treaty for
the removal of the Indians could be ratified except by a concurrence
of two thirds. And all these difficulties to be overcome at a
time when Congress was inflamed with angry debates upon abolition
petitions, transmission of incendiary publications, imputed designs
to abolish slavery; and the appearance of the criminating article
in South Carolina entitled the "Crises," announcing a Southern
convention and a secession if certain Northern States did not
suppress the abolition societies within their limits within a
limited time.
In the face of all these discouraging obstacles the two Missouri
senators, Messrs. Benton and Linn, commenced their operations. The
first was to procure a bill for the alteration of the compromise
line and the extension of the boundary: it was obtained from the
Judiciary Committee, reported by Mr. John M. Clayton of Delaware:
and passed the Senate without material opposition. It went to the
House of Representatives; and found there no serious opposition
to its passage. A treaty was negotiated with the Sac and Fox
Indians to whom the country had been assigned, and was ratified
by the requisite two thirds. And this, besides doing an act of
generous justice to the State of Missouri, was the noble answer
which Northern members gave to the imputed design of abolishing
slavery in the States! actually extending it! and by an addition
equal in extent to such States as Delaware and Rhode Island; and
by its fertility equal to one of the third class of States. And
this accomplished by the extraordinary process of altering a
compromise line intended to be perpetual, and the reconversion of
soil which had been slave, and made free, back again from free to
slave. And all this when, had there been the least disposition to
impede the proper extension of a slave State, there were plausible
reasons enough to cover an opposition, in the serious objections
to enlarging a State already the largest in the Union--to removing
Indians again from a home to which they had just been removed
under a national pledge of no more removals--and to disturbing the
compromise line of 1820 on which the Missouri question had been
settled; and the line between free and slave territory fixed for
national reasons, to remain for ever. The author of this View was
part and parcel of all that transaction--remembers well the anxiety
of the State to obtain the extension--her joy at obtaining it--the
gratitude which all felt to the Northern members without whose
aid it could not have been done; and whose magnanimous assistance
under such trying circumstances he now records as one of the
proofs--(this work contains many others)--of the willingness of the
non-slaveholding part of the Union to be just and generous to their
slaveholding brethren, even in disregard of cherished prejudices and
offensive criminations. It was the second great proof to this effect
at this identical session, the ratification of the Georgia Cherokee
treaty being the other.