ut Mr. Monroe and the rest of the Cabinet
preferred a milder course; and France and Great Britain ventured to
express to this country a hope that no violent action would be
precipitately taken. So the matter lay by for a while, awaiting the
coming of the promised envoy from Spain.

At this time the great question of the admission of Missouri into (p. 119)
the Union of States began to agitate Congress and the nation. Mr.
Adams, deeply absorbed in the perplexing affairs of his department,
into which this domestic problem did not enter, was at first careless
of it. His ideas concerning the matter, he wrote, were a "chaos;" but
it was a "chaos" into which his interest in public questions soon
compelled him to bring order. In so doing he for the first time fairly
exposes his intense repulsion for slavery, his full appreciation of
the irrepressible character of the conflict between the slave and the
free populations, and the sure tendency of that conflict to a
dissolution of the Union. Few men at that day read the future so
clearly. While dissolution was generally regarded as a threat not
really intended to be carried out, and compromises were supposed to be
amply sufficient to control the successive emergencies, the underlying
moral force of the anti-slavery movement acting against the
encroaching necessities of the slave-holding communities constituted
an element and involved possibilities which Mr. Adams, from his
position of observation outside the immediate controversy, noted with
foreseeing accuracy. He discerned in passing events the "title-page to
a great tragic volume;" and he predicted that the more or less distant
but sure end must be an attempt to dissolve the Union. His own (p. 120)
position was distinctly defined from the outset, and his strong
feelings were vigorously expressed. He beheld with profound regret the
superiority of the slave-holding party in ability; he remarked sadly
how greatly they excelled in debating power their lukewarm opponents;
he was filled with indignation against the Northern men of Southern
principles. "Slavery," he wrote, "is the great and foul stain upon the
North American Union, and it is a contemplation worthy of the most
exalted soul whether its total abolition is or is not practicable." "A
life devoted to" the emancipation problem "would be nobly spent or
sacrificed." He talks with much acerbity of expression about the
"slave-drivers," and the "flagrant image of human incons