66 POLITICAL LIFE-II 



ous times ; and even after he had committed what seemed 

 to me the unpardonable sin, it was hard to resist his elo- 

 quence. He it was who, doubtless from a mixture of mo- 

 tives, personal and public, had proposed the abolition of 

 the Missouri Compromise, which since the year 1820 had 

 been the bulwark of the new territories against the en- 

 croachments of slavery. The whole anti-slavery senti- 

 ment of the North was thereby intensified, and as the 

 establishment of north polarity at one end of the magnet 

 excites south polarity at the other, so Southern feeling 

 in favor of slavery was thereby increased. Up to a re- 

 cent period Southern leaders had, as a rule, deprecated 

 slavery, and hoped for its abolition ; now they as generally 

 advocated it as good in itself ; the main foundation of 

 civil liberty; the normal condition of the working classes 

 of every nation; and some of them urged the revival of 

 the African slave-trade. The struggle became more and 

 more bitter. I was during that time at Yale, and the gen- 

 eral sentiment of that university in those days favored 

 almost any concession to save the Union. The venerable 

 Silliman, and a great majority of the older professors 

 spoke at public meetings in favor of the pro-slavery com- 

 promise measures which they fondly hoped would settle 

 the difficulty between North and South and reestablish 

 the Union on firm foundations. The new compromise was 

 indeed a bitter dose for them, since it contained the fu- 

 gitive slave law in its most drastic form; and every one 

 of them, with the exception of a few theological doctrin- 

 aires who found slavery in the Bible, abhorred the whole 

 slave system. The Yale faculty, as a rule, took ground 

 against anti-slavery effort, and, among other ways of 

 propagating what they considered right opinions, there 

 was freely distributed among the students a sermon by 

 the Rev. Dr. Boardman of Philadelphia, which went to 

 extremes in advocating compromise with slavery and the 

 slave power. 



The great body of the students, also, from North and 

 South, took the same side. It is a suggestive fact that 



