In the second selection we have chosen, Senator James Barbour of
Virginia defends slavery:
The gentleman from Pennsylvania asks shall we suffer Missouri to come
into the Union with this savage mark [_of slavery_] on her
countenance? I appeal to that gentleman to know whether this be
language to address to an American Senate, composed equally of members
from States precisely in that condition that Missouri would be in,
were she to tolerate slavery. Are these sentiments calculated to
cherish that harmony and affection so essential to any beneficial
results from our Union? But, sir, I will not imitate this course, and
I will strive to repress the feeling which such remarks are calculated
to awaken.
... They assure us that they do not mean to touch this property
[_slavery_] in the old states.... What kind of ethics is this that is
bounded by latitude and longitude, which is inoperative on the left,
but is omnipotent on the right bank of a river? Such a doctrine is
well calculated to excite our solicitude; for, although the gentlemen
who now hold it are sincere in their declarations, and mean to content
themselves with a triumph in this controversy, what security have we
that others will not apply it to the South generally?
Let it not, however, be supposed that in the abstract I am advocating
slavery. Like all other human things, it is mixed with good and
evil—the latter, no doubt, preponderating.... Whether slavery was
ordained by God Himself in a particular revelation to His chosen
people, or whether it be merely permitted as a part of that moral evil
which seems to be the inevitable portion of man, are questions I will
not approach; I leave them to the casuists [_debaters_] and the
divines [_preachers_]. It is sufficient for us, as statesmen, to know
that it has existed from the earliest ages of the world, and that to
us has been assigned such a portion as, in reference to their number
and the various considerations resulting from a change of their
condition, no remedy, even plausible, has been suggested, though
wisdom and benevolence united have unceasingly brooded over the
subject.
However dark and inscrutable may be the ways of heaven, who is he that
arrogantly presumes to arraign [_challenge_] them? The same mighty
power that planted the greater and the lesser luminary in the heavens
permits on earth the bondsman and the free. To that Providence, as men
and Christians, let us bow. If it be consistent with His will, in the
fullness of time, to break the fetter of the slave, He will raise up
some Moses to be their deliverer. To him commission will be given to
lead them up out of the land of bondage.