As a statesman, his conduct on this
question has been consistently pro-slavery. He indefatigably negotiated
for the recovery of fugitive slaves from Canada, when Secretary of
State, though without success. In the Senate he successfully carried
through the admission of Missouri into the Union, as a slave State. He
has resisted a late promising movement in Kentucky in favor of
emancipation; and lastly, in one of his most elaborate speeches, made
just before the late presidential election, the proceedings of the
abolitionists were reviewed and condemned, and he utterly renounced all
sympathy with their object. By way of apology for his early
indiscretion, he observes, "but if I had been then, or were _now_, a
citizen of any of the planting States--the southern or southwestern
States--I should have opposed, and would continue to oppose, any scheme
whatever of emancipation, gradual or immediate."
In this extract, and throughout the whole speech, slavery is treated as
a pecuniary question, and the grand argument against abolition, is the
loss of property that would ensue.
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