An Anonymous Georgian,
"Plain Words for the North," American Whig Review, XII (December 1850)
"In a government
where sectional interests and feelings may come into conflict, the sole
security for permanence and peace is to be found in a Constitution whose
provisions are inviolable. . . . 'Every State, before
entering into that compact, stood in a position of independence: Ere yielding
that independence, it was only proper that provision should be made to protect
the interests of those which would inevitably be the weaker in that
confederacy.
" [The framers of the Constitution] acted wisely,
and embodied in the Constitution all that the South could ask. But two
Constitutional provisions are necessary to secure Southern rights upon this
important question,-the recognition of slavery where the people choose it and
the remedy for fugitive slaves. . . . We hold that the Constitution of the
'A
large portion of our States have adopted and allow slavery. The entire
country becomes possessed of new territory, to the acquisition of which these
slave States contribute mainly. The South admits the right of this new
territory to choose for itself whether slavery shall or shall not exist there.
'But the North insists, that while the territory was partly acquired by
Southern men, is partly owned by Southern men, that they shall be excluded from
its soil, that they shall not carry their property into their own land-land
which is theirs by the right of purchase' Thus it is rendered, if these views
are carried out, simply impossible for any new State representing the Southern
interest ever to come into the Union. The equilibrium which alone can preserve
the Constitution is utterly destroyed. And to do this, flagrant violations of
the plainest rules of right and wrong are committed. . . .
"The