182 SLAVERY IN MISSOURI. [CHAP. XXXIII. 



venturers, and uneducated settlers, who have little control over 

 their passions, and who, when they oppress their slaves, are not 

 checked by public opinion, as in more advanced communities. 

 New comers of a higher tone of sentiment are compelled some 

 times to witness cruelties which fill them with indignation, 

 heightened by the necessity of being silent, and keeping on good 

 terms with persons of whose conduct they disapprove. To the 

 passing stranger, they can enlarge on this source of annoyance, 

 and send him away grieving that so late as the year 1821, Mis 

 souri should have been added to the Union as a slave state, against 

 the wishes of a respectable minority of its own inhabitants, and 

 against the feeling of a majority of the more educated population 

 of the north. 



