The only compromise made at all was that made with the state of Missouri about the construction of her Constitution. Nevertheless, the Southern States were always to regard this legislative adoption of the line 36° 30′ as a settlement of the question of slavery in the territories, provided it was adhered to as such in principle and spirit, but it was not accepted by the Northern people in that light and was made by them the ground-work for new demands and encroachments.
The proposition for the prohibition of slavery in the territories, was not one in favor of the freedom of the slaves themselves, as their introduction into those territories would not increase the number of slaves, but would expand them on a wider sphere, thus rendering it easier to adopt measures for emancipation, at least in some of the states if that was desirable, and making the condition of the slaves more comfortable if emancipation did not take place; while the restriction of the institution to the states where it existed, would forever close the door on any steps for its voluntary abolition and render the condition of the slaves much less desirable. Diffusion was much the best policy for both masters and slaves, and the opposition to the introduction of the latter into the territories was only a political manœuvre for the purpose of obtaining a sectional preponderance of power, and in all of the debates, the views expressed by the advocates of the restriction tended to the furtherance of that object.
By the final ratification of the treaty between the United States and Spain in the year 1821, Florida became a territory of the United States and a territorial government was soon formed therefor.
After the admission of Missouri into the Union, there was a subsidence in the agitation upon the subject of slavery for a number of years, though every now and then a petition from some Quaker meeting was received and quietly disposed of.
In the year 1834, the British parliament passed an act for the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies, her colonies in those islands being all of the slave colonies left to Great Britain. These colonies had dwindled into insignificance and formed but a very inconsiderable part of her gigantic colonial system. Canada, Australia, New Zealand and her possessions in the East Indies furnished an ample field for British settlement and colonial trade, which dwarfed into very diminutive proportions the British interests in the West Indies. Great Britain could therefore afford to be philanthropic and at the cost of £20,000,000 (about $96,000,000) she gave liberty to a very few more than 600,000 slaves, who were placed in a condition of apprenticeship for several years to enable the planters to accommodate themselves to the new order of things by degrees. She had abandoned the slave trade after, by the loss of the American colonies, she had ceased to have a large interest in the subject of slavery, and this grant of £20,000,000 for the freedom of all of the negro slaves left in her dominions, was the final atonement she made for the millions she had consigned to slavery, and the millions who had been cast overboard, to meet a watery grave, on their route to slavery.
To make her own gracious act more conspicuous, she turned propagandist and commenced denouncing the system of slavery which she had been so instrumental in fixing upon the world, as un-Christian, inhuman and barbarous. Having, as she considered, cast the beam out of her own eye, she could see more distinctly the mote in that of others, but she made no restitution of the hundreds of millions she derived from the profits of the inhuman traffic as she now styled it, and which had assisted in building up her marine, manufactures and commerce. Having thus washed her hands of the sin, as she imagined, she became most intolerant in her opinions and denunciations of those upon whom she had entailed the institution of slavery by her avarice and power, furnishing another example of those,
"Who compound for sins they're inclined to,
By damning those they have no mind to."
Emissaries soon came out from Great Britain to the United States and began the agitation of the abolition of slavery there. The preponderance of women in the New England States caused them to be selected as proselytes for the new crusade. There was also a class of men in that section, offshoots of the old persecuting theocracy who furnished recruits to the agitators. There were doubtless many who really believed slavery to be a great sin and wrong, who joined in the crusade from conscientious motives. Knaves there were in plentiful supply, gowned and ungowned, who were ready for anything which would tend to their personal advancement in position or their pecuniary profit. Out of these materials abolition societies were formed and petitions began to pour into Congress for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and other places within the Federal jurisdiction, while the mails were filled with incendiary publications calculated to stir up insurrections. John Quincy Adams, who had held political office from his earliest manhood, until he became President, obtained a return to political life by his election to the lower House of Congress. Shortly after his return there, in presenting one of the chronic petitions of the Quakers for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, he had taken occasion to notify the House and the country that he had no sympathy with the views of the politicians, yet he joined the new agitators.