The Fugitive Slave Law, more inhuman than either of the forms of
traffic, was defended in 1850 on good constitutional grounds; but the
eloquent invective of the early days against an evil which constitutions
might necessitate but could not alter or justify, does not go hand in hand
with the legal argument.
The next occasion after the Missouri Compromise, on which slavery made its
influence strongly felt at Washington, was when Mr. Adams's scheme of the
Panama mission aroused such bitter and unexpected resistance in Congress.
Mr. Webster defended the policy of the President with great ability, but he
confined himself to the international and constitutional questions which it
involved, and did not discuss the underlying motive and true source of the
opposition. The debate on Foote's resolution in 1830, in the wide range
which it took, of course included slavery, and Mr. Hayne had a good deal to
say on that subject, which lay at the bottom of the tariff agitation, as it
did at that of every Southern movement of any real importance. In his
reply, Mr. Webster said that he had made no attack upon this sensitive
institution, that he had simply stated that the Northwest had been greatly
benefited by the exclusion of slavery, and that it would have been better
for Kentucky if she had come within the scope of the ordinance of 1787.
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