Thomas Jefferson, who lived at Monticello near Charlottesville, saw the country headed for conflict as early as 1820. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. But as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.
Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.
Of one thing I am certain, that . . . An abstinence, too, from this act of power, would remove the jealousy excited by the undertaking of Congress to regulate the condition . . . of men composing a state. This is certainly the exclusive right of every state. . . . I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be that I live not to weep over it. If they would but dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away, against an abstract principle more likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves, and of treason against the hopes of the world.