h 20, 1820.

I am glad to find you still sparing moments for subjects
interesting to the public welfare. The remarks on the thorny one
to which you refer in the "National Recorder," seem to present
the best arrangement for the unfortunate part of our population
whose case has enlisted the anxiety of so many benevolent minds,
next to that which provides a foreign outlet and location for
them. I have long thought that our vacant territory was the
resource which, in some mode or other, was most applicable and
adequate as a gradual cure for the portentous evil; without,
however, being unaware that even that would encounter serious
difficulties of different sorts.[9]

TO GENERAL LAFAYETTE.

MONTPELIER, NOV. 25, 1820.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The subject which ruffles the surface of public affairs most, at
present, is furnished by the transmission of the "Territory" of
Missouri from a state of nonage to a maturity for
self-Government, and for a membership in the Union. Among the
questions involved in it, the one most immediately interesting to
humanity is the question whether a toleration or prohibition of
slavery Westward of the Mississippi would most extend its evils.
The human part of the argument against the prohibition turns on
the position, that whilst the importation of slaves from abroad
is precluded, a diffusion of those in the Country tends at once
to meliorate their actual condition, and to facilitate their
eventual emancipation. Unfortunately, the subject, which was
settled at the last session of Congress by a mutual concession of
the parties, is reproduced on the arena by a clause in the
Constitution of Missouri, distinguishing between free persons of
colour and white persons, and providing that the Legislature of
the new State shall exclude from it the former. What will be the
issue of the revived discussion is yet to be seen. The case opens
the wider field, as the Constitution and laws of the different
States are much at variance in the civic character giving to free
persons of colour; those of most of the States, not excepting
such as have abolished slavery, imposing various
disqualifications, which degrade them from the rank and right