isfy the South, for it gave no security. It provided only for a lawsuit with an uncertain prospect. Neither could it satisfy the North, for by implication it discountenanced the exercise of the power of Congress with regard to slavery in the territories. It introduced in the discussion of the problem that dangerous explosive, the “principle of non-intervention,” which four years later served to justify the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and then brought the forces of slavery and free labor to confront one another in arms on the plains of Kansas. Thus this part of the compromise of 1850, instead of settling anything, only unsettled the compromise of 1820.
An equally prolific source of mischief was the fugitive-slave law. No doubt a large number of slaves had in the course of time escaped from the South and found shelter in the North. No doubt the Northern States had been remiss in performing their constitutional obligations as to the return of fugitives, for in some of them the enforcement of the existing law was actually obstructed by state legislation. No doubt the South had in this respect occasion to complain. But an institution like slavery was naturally exposed to such losses. It would have been prudent to bear them in silence. It was certainly most unwise to make laws calculated to bring the most odious features of slavery home to a free people naturally impatient of its existence. This the fugitive-slave law did in a very provoking form. It gave United
