of
shame upon my cheek, as a Northern man, if I were to say that it was a
compact, and that the section of the country to which I belong received
the consideration, and then repudiated the obligation in eleven months
after it was entered into. I deny that it was a compact, in any sense
of the term. But if it was, the record proves that faith was not
observed--that the contract was never carried into effect--that after
the North had procured the passage of the act prohibiting slavery in the
Territories, with a majority in the House large enough to prevent its
repeal, Missouri was refused admission into the Union as a slave-holding
State, in conformity with the act of March 6, 1820. If the proposition
be correct, as contended for by the opponents of this bill--that
there was a solemn compact between the North and the South that, in
consideration of the prohibition of slavery in the Territories, Missouri
was to be admitted into the Union, in conformity with the act of
1820--that compact was repudiated by the North, and rescinded by the
joint action of the two parties within twelve months from its date.
Missouri was never admitted under the act of the 6th of March, 1820. She
was refused admission under that act. She was voted out of the Union
by Northern votes, notwithstanding the stipulation that she should
be received; and, in consequence of these facts, a new compromise was
rendered necessary, by the terms of which Missouri was to be admitted
into the Union conditionally--admitted on a condition not embraced in
the act of 1820, and, in addition, to a full compliance with all the
provisions of said act. If, then, the act of 1820, by the eighth section
of which slavery was prohibited in Missouri, was a compact, it is clear
to the comprehension of every fair-minded man that the refusal of
the North to admit Missouri, in compliance with its stipulations, and
without further conditions, imposes upon us a high, moral obligation to
remove the prohibition of slavery in the Territories, since it has been
shown to have been procured upon a condition never performed. * * *

Mr. President, I did not wish to refer to these things. I did not
understand them fully in all their bearings at the time I made my first
speech on this subject; and, so far as I was familiar with them, I made
as little reference to them as was consistent with my duty; because it
was a mortifying reflection to me, as a Northern man, that we had not
been able, in