reat wrong. They refused to accept the view that
later generations of American citizens were to be bound for an
indefinite period by this error of judgment on the part of the Fathers.
They proposed to get rid of slavery, as an institution incompatible with
the principles on which the Republic was founded. They pointed out that
under the Declaration of Independence all men had an equal right to
"life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and that there was no
limitation of this claim to men of white race. If it was not going to be
possible to argue slavery out of existence, these men preferred to have
the Union dissolved rather than to bring upon States like Massachusetts
a share of the responsibility for the wrong done to mankind and to
justice under the laws of South Carolina.

The Whig party, whose great leader, Henry Clay, had closed his life in
1852, just at the time when Lincoln was becoming prominent in politics,
held that all citizens were bound by the compact entered into by their
ancestors, first under the Articles of Confederation of 1783, and later
under the Constitution of 1789. Our ancestors had, for the purpose of
bringing about the organisation of the Union, agreed to respect the
institution of slavery in the States in which it existed. The Whigs of
1850, held, therefore, that in such of the Slave States as had been part
of the original thirteen, slavery was an institution to be recognised
and protected under the law of the land. They admitted, further, that
what their grandfathers had done in 1789, had been in a measure
confirmed by the action of their fathers in 1820. The Missouri
Compromise of 1820, in making clear that all States thereafter organised
north of the line thirty-six thirty were to be Free States, made clear
also that States south of that line had the privilege of coming into the
Union with the institution of slavery and that the citizens in these
newer Slave States should be assured of the same recognition and rights
as had been accorded to those of the original thirteen.

The Missouri Compromise permitted also the introduction of Missouri
itself into the Union as a Slave State (as a counterpoise to the State
of Maine admitted the same year), although almost the entire territory
of the State of Missouri was north of the latitude 36 deg. 30'.

We may recall that, under the Constitution, the States of the South,
while denying the suffrage to the negro, had secured the right to
include