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The real danger to the Union will come when the encroachments of the Slave-Power and the concessions of the Trade-Power shall have made it a burden instead of a blessing.
Thus far, most of the political victories had been with the slave-power, and the South became correspondently arrogant and defiant. The war of ideas against Southern interests now raged with ominous and increasing force in all the Northern States. Public opinion became more and more inflamed.
The slave-power had been erected into patron saint by the new Ireland in America, and the new Ireland in America was very well content with his saintship's patronage and service. Thus it happened that the great expectations, which were excited by the Irish address, were never realized.
With the record of J. Q. Adams fresh in the popular memory, his son and his only representative could not make terms with the slave-power, and the slave-power overshadowed all the great Boston interests. No doubt Mr. Adams had principles of his own, as well as inherited, but even his children, who as yet had no principles, could equally little follow the lead of Mr. Webster or even of Mr. Seward.
The Slave-Power must be humbled, must be punished, so humbled and so punished as to be a warning forever; but Slavery is an evil transient in its cause and its consequences, compared with those which would result from unsettling the faith of a nation in its own manhood, and setting a whole generation of men hopelessly adrift in the formless void of anarchy.
Stowe was in Boston was this proposed law, and when she arrived in Brunswick her soul was all on fire with indignation at this new indignity and wrong about to be inflicted by the slave-power on the innocent and defenseless. After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, letter after letter was received by Mrs. Stowe in Brunswick from Mrs.
I addressed it, in a moderate tone; though I think that I used some gesticulation. Said I: Personation of the Slave-power! predatory, grasping, black! thinkest thou a panting fugitive lies hid under my "delusion?" or wouldst thou seize a freeman? The Ægis of Massachusetts is over me. Gape! Yawn! Thou art powerless; but thy impudence is sublime.
It was quite possible, in fact it was highly probable, that, once in the presidency, he could not be controlled or guided by the slave-power or by any other sectional influence. Mr. Fillmore, inferior in every way to Mr. Webster in intellect, in force, in reputation, would give them a mild, safe administration and be easily influenced by the South. Mr.
If the South could have trammeled up the consequences of annexation, secure, indeed, for a season, would it have held its political supremacy in America? But omnipotent as was the slave-power in the Government, it was not equal to this labor. In the great game, in which Texas was the stakes, Fate had, unawares, slipped into the seat between the gamesters with hands full of loaded dice.
Though I fear almost to hold converse with you, yet, conscious of my innate love of liberty, I venture to do so. Bunker Hill is within twenty miles of my home. When I go to that sacred memorial of liberty, I strive to fortify my soul afresh against the slave-power.
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