far less adapted to slave labor than New Mexico, which Webster said was protected from slavery by the laws of God, for the climate here is unsuited to the negro and to the products of his profitable toil, all of which was made so plain in the Judge's letter that the wayfaring man, though a fool, could understand.
After the circulation of this address, any observing person could notice that a change was taking place; any sensitive person could feel it. The people for whom the address was intended were beginning to discover themselves and think aloud. And I assert that what is here written is no afterthought, but the result of inquiry and observation made at the time. The "Free State Letter" was published in the year 1857, July 28th; the question of State organization was carried at the June election; at the same time, delegates to a Constitutional Convention were elected and the convention submitted its work, to be voted on on the 9th of November following.
Passing up the valley through Lane County in October, I fell in company with Campbell Chrisman, whom I had not met since we started across the plains in the spring of 1851. He gave me a pressing invitation to go home with him for a night's visit, but I parried the invitation by pleading haste to reach Roseburg, where I expected to overtake an absconding debtor for whom I had signed to the amount of several hundred dollars. Mr. Chrisman said that his house on the Coast Fork road was not out of my way and a better one to travel. Finding myself out of excuses, I candidly told him my real objections to a night's talk, for knowing him to have been a slave-holder in Missouri and a, very firm, tenacious and unchangeable sort of character, I said, "Mr. Chrisman, there is no use asking me to go with you, for I am a free-state man and not convertible." He instantly replied, "So am I." I was rather taken aback by this disclosure and queried how this came about. He replied, "Easy enough, Judge Williams is right; slavery in this country would cost more than it would come to." After this we talked freely
