Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. II.djvu/81

JOHN TYLER 55 creased. "Slavery," said he, "has been represented on all hands as a dark cloud, and the candor of the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Whitman] drove him to the admission that it would be well to disperse this cloud. In this sentiment I entirely concur with him. How can you otherwise disarm it? Will you suffer it to increase in its darkness over one particular portion of this land till its hor rors shall burst upon it? Will you permit the light nings of its wrath to break upon the south, when by the interposition of a wise system of legislation you may reduce it to a summer s cloud?" New York and Pennsylvania, he argued, had been able to emancipate their slaves only by reducing their number by exportation. Dispersion, moreover, would be likely to ameliorate the condition of the black man, for by making his labor scarce in each particular locality it would increase the demand for it and would thus make it the interest of the master to deal fairly and generously with his slaves. To the objection that the increase of the slave popu lation would fully keep up with its territorial ex pansion, he replied by denying that such would be the case. His next argument was that if an old state, such as Virginia, could have slaves, while a new state, such as Missouri, was to be prevented by Federal authority from having them, then the old and new states would at once be placed upon a different footing, which was contrary to the spirit