dom. The opposition to
this extension of slavery was taken up by American Christianity as its
own cause. It was the impending danger of such an extension that
prompted that powerful and unanimous declaration of the Presbyterian
General Assembly in 1818. The arguments against the Missouri bill,
whether in the debates of Congress or in countless memorials and
resolutions from public meetings both secular and religious, were
arguments from justice and duty and the law of Christ. These were met by
constitutional objections and considerations of expediency and
convenience, and by threats of disunion and civil war. The defense of
slavery on principle had not yet begun to be heard, even among
politicians.

The successful extension of slavery beyond the Mississippi River was
disheartening to the friends of justice and humanity, but only for the
moment. Already, before the two years' conflict had been decided by "the
Missouri Compromise," a powerful series of articles by that great
religious leader, Jeremiah Evarts, in the "Panoplist" (Boston, 1820),
rallied the forces of the church to renew the battle. The decade that
opened with that defeat is distinguished as a period of sustained
antislavery activity on the part of the united Christian citizenship of
the nation in all quarters.[271:1] In New England the focus of
antislavery effort was perhaps the theological seminary at Andover.
There the leading question among the students in their "Society of
Inquiry concerning Missions" was the question, what could be done, and
especially what _they_ could do, for the uplifting of the colored
population of the country, both the enslaved and the free. Measures were
concerted there for the founding of "an African college where youth were
to be educated on a scale so liberal as to place them on a level with
other men";[271:2] and the plan was not forgotten or neglected by these
young men when from year to year they came into places of effective
influence. With eminent fitness the Fourth of July was taken as an
antislavery holiday, and into various towns within reach from Andover
their most effective speakers went forth to give antislavery addresses
on that day. Beginning with the Fourth of July, 1823, the annual
antislavery address at Park Street Church, Boston, before several united
churches of that city, continued for the rest of that decade at least
to be an occasion for earnest appeal and practical effort in behalf of
the oppressed. Nei