not have any quieting effect upon them. The fight over the Missouri Compromise had convinced them that the North would prevent, if possible, the extension of slavery to the new territories, and that this meant confining the institution to a given space, where it would be eventually smothered. It might last a long time in its then boundaries, but it would finally reach a limit where its existence would depend upon the forbearance of its enemies. Then the question which perplexed Thomas Jefferson would come up afresh: "What shall be done with the blacks?" Mr. Garrott Brown, of Alabama, a present-day writer of ability and candor, thinks that the underlying question in the minds of the Southern people in the forties and fifties of the last century was not chiefly slavery, but the presence of Africans in large numbers, whether bond or free. This included the slavery question as a dollar-and-cent proposition and something more. Mrs. Fanny Kemble Butler, who lived on a Georgia plantation in the thirties, said that the chief obstacle to emancipation was the fact that every able-bodied negro could be sold for a thousand dollars in the Charleston market. Both fear and cupidity were actively at work in the Southern mind.
In short, there was already an irrepressible conflict in our land, although nobody had yet used those words. There was a fixed opinion in the North that slavery was an evil which ought not to be extended and enlarged; that the same reasons existed for curtailing it as for stopping the African slave trade. There was a growing opinion in the South that such extension was a vital necessity and that the South in contending for it was contending for existence. The prevailing thought in that quarter was that the Southern people were on the defensive, that they were resisting aggression. In this feeling they were sincere and they gave expression to it in very hot temper.
General W. T. Sherman, who was at the head of an institution of learning for boys in Louisiana in 1859, felt that he was treading on underground fires. In December of that year he wrote to Thomas Ewing, Jr.:
Negroes in the great numbers that exist here must of necessity be slaves. Theoretical notions of humanity and religion cannot shake the commercial fact that their labor is of great value and cannot be dispensed with. Still, of course, I wish it never had existed, for it does make mischief. No power on earth can restrain opinion elsewhere and these opinions expressed beget a vindictive feeling. The mere dread of revolt, sedition, or external interference makes men, ordinarily calm, almost mad. I, of course, do not debate the question, and moderate as my views are, I feel that I am suspected, and if I do not actually join in the praises of slavery I may be denounced as an abolitionist.[6]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Mr. H. C. Lodge, in his Life of Daniel Webster, says, touching the debate with Hayne in 1830:
"When the Constitution was adopted by the votes of states at Philadelphia, and accepted by the votes of states in popular conventions, it is safe to say that there was not a man in the country, from Washington and Hamilton, on the one side, to George Clinton and George Mason, on the other, who regarded the new system as anything but an experiment entered upon by the states, and from which each and every state had the right to peaceably withdraw, a right which was very likely to be exercised."
Mr. Gaillard Hunt, author of the Life of James Madison, and editor of his writings, has published recently a confidential memorandum dated May 11, 1794, written by John Taylor of Caroline for Mr. Madison's information, giving an account of a long and solemn interview between himself and Rufus King and Oliver Ellsworth, in which the two latter affirmed that, by reason of differences of opinion between the East and the South, as to the scope and functions of government, the Union could not last long. Therefore they considered it best to have a dissolution at once, by mutual consent, rather than by a less desirable mode. Taylor, on the other hand, thought that the Union should be supported if possible, but if not possible he agreed that an amicable separation was preferable. Madison wrote at the bottom of this paper the words: "The language of K and E probably in terrorem," and laid it away so carefully that it never saw the light until the year 1905.
[2] Letters of Daniel Webster, edited by C. W. Van Tyne, p. 67. Mr. Van Tyne says that Webster "here advocated a doctrine hardly distinguishable from nullification."
[3] Referring to this speech of Calhoun and to Webster's reply, Mr. Lodge says:
"Whatever the people of the United States understood the Constitution to mean in 1789, there can be no question that a majority in 1833 regarded it as a fundamental law and not a compact—an opinion which has now become universal. But it was quite another thing to argue that what the Constitution had come to mean was what it meant when it was adopted."
See also Pendleton's Life of Alexander H. Stephens, chap. XI.
[4] G. H. Moore's History of Slavery in Massachusetts, p. 215.
[5] Jefferson was cut to the heart by this failure. Commenting on an article entitled "États Unis" in the Encylopédie, written by M. de Meusnier, referring to his proposed anti-slavery ordinance, he said:
"The voice of a single individual of the State which was divided, or one of those which were of the negative, would have prevented this abominable crime from spreading itself over the new country. Thus we see the fate of millions unborn hanging on the tongue of one man, and Heaven was silent in that awful moment."
[6] General W. T. Sherman as College President, p. 88.
THE LIFE OF LYMAN TRUMBULL
CHAPTER I
ANCESTRY AND EARLY LIFE
The subject of this memoir was born in Colchester, Connecticut, October 12, 1813. The Trumbull family was the most illustrious in the state, embracing three governors and other distinguished men. All were descendants of John Trumbull (or rather "Trumble"[7]), a cooper by trade, and his wife, Ellenor Chandler, of Newcastle, England, who migrated to Massachusetts in 1639, and settled first in Roxbury and removed to Rowley in the following year. Two sons were born to them in Newcastle-on-Tyne: Beriah, 1637 (died in infancy), and John, 1639.
The latter at the age of thirty-one removed to Suffield, Connecticut. He married and had four sons: John, Joseph, Ammi, and Benoni.
Captain Benoni Trumbull, married to Sarah Drake and settled in Lebanon, Connecticut, had a son, Benjamin, born May 11, 1712.
This Benjamin, married to Mary Brown of Hebron, Connecticut, had a son, Benjamin, born December 19, 1735.
This son was graduated at Yale College in 1759, and studied for the ministry; he was ordained in 1760 at North Haven, Connecticut, where he officiated nearly sixty years, his preaching being interrupted only by the Revolutionary War, in which he served both as soldier and as chaplain. He was the author of the standard colonial history of Connecticut. He was married to Miss Martha Phelps in 1760. They had two sons and five daughters.
The elder son, Benjamin, born in North Haven, September 24, 1769, became a lawyer and married Elizabeth Mather,