I Have Seen Performances In America - And In Italy And
France Also, But Above All In America - Which Would Have Made The
Hair Of Any English Professional Driver Stand On End.
And in this way I entered St. Louis.
CHAPTER V.
MISSOURI.
Missouri is a slave State, lying to the west of the Mississippi and
to the north of Arkansas. It forms a portion of the territory ceded
by France to the United States in 1803. Indeed, it is difficult to
say how large a portion of the continent of North America is
supposed to be included in that territory. It contains the States
of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas, as also the present
Indian Territory; but it also is said to have contained all the land
lying back from them to the Rocky Mountains, Utah, Nebraska, and
Dakota, and forms no doubt the widest dominion ever ceded by one
nationality to another.
Missouri lies exactly north of the old Missouri compromise line -
that is, 36.30 north. When the Missouri compromise was made it was
arranged that Missouri should be a slave State, but that no other
State north of the 36.30 line should ever become slave soil.
Kentucky and Virginia, as also of course Maryland and Delaware, four
of the old slave States, were already north of that line; but the
compromise was intended to prevent the advance of slavery in the
Northwest. The compromise has been since annulled, on the ground, I
believe, that Congress had not constitutionally the power to declare
that any soil should be free, or that any should be slave soil.
That is a question to be decided by the States themselves, as each
individual State may please.
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