The Minnesota pioneer. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn. Territory) 1849-1855, 1850-01-30
THE MINNESOTA PIONEER
ST. PAUL, minnesota,
Wednesday Merning, Jan. 80, 1850,
The Crisis.

The Crisis.
Was the Union worth creating! Then
it is worth maintaining. Has it accomplish
ed anything! Rather let us inquire, what
that is great 10 conception, and grand in ex-
ecuton, il has not accomplished! What
nayics it has launched upon the OCEAN
What terrible armies it has created and
sent forth to glorious victory--what vast
territories of wild regions it has added to
the empire of ciyiliZatlon--what commerce
il has created, internal and external-what
gigantic enterprises il has stimulated
what an immense aggregate Of individual
force, Of personal energy and power, the
Union, with its glorious associations and
dazzling rewards, has called into action! |,
is the arena Of sovereign states, where every
state and every individual composing the
state, is competitor for the highest human
distinctions.
Ii is gratifying to every lover Of our COM
mon country, not less to us who inhabit the
young territory Of Minnesota than to cit
izcns Of the oldest states in the Contederacy.
to feel, to know, that the dark shallow which
lately threatened "a total eclipse of the g!o-
rious light of the Union, is passing off. The
Territories of California and New Mexico,
, If admitted, will be admitted rs free states
They will settle this question for them
selves. There will he no occasion for any
provisos about them. There will be no
need of any more provisos. II no proviso
/ is needed for California, for New Mexico,
/ for Desere,, for Minnesota, for Nebraska,
contend for' Nothing; nothing but mere
abstraction, naked question of right, to
a useless restriction upon slavery, which
our brethren Of the South earnestly believe
is unconstitutional. Admit that we have
the tight; il is such a right as Edmund
Burke eloquen,ly conjured Parliament not
TO exercise against the will of the colonies,
lie. "the right to shear a wolf" Ii then,
we have every thing to lose and nothing TO
gain, by fighting for this useless abstraction,
why contend about it, The provso appli-
cd to the Northwest Territory against sla-
very, we Of the north, believe sufficiently
established constitutional precedent for
restricting slavery in new territories. We
have no doubt of it; but that proviso did
more-it created II phalanx of free states
} in fha III hot RI fhor
progress Of the slave power is morally inn
possible. Such is the preponderance of
free labor, free enterprise, free wealth, free
population, that it is perfectly safe to open
any new territory for settlement with the as
surance that freemen will predominant in
it and establish free constitution. Have
those who are willing to join in the useless
adoption Of the proyiso, at all hazards,
considered truly the value Of the Union /:
In his address at Cambridge, few months
since, DIR. Bethune said:
"Suppose, for one melancholy moment,
that this beautiful economy Of exchange
were broken up-that the Western valleys
were shut out from the sea by adverse gov
erninents; that those on the coast were
hemmed into their own narrow limits bv
hostile forts along the mountain ridges
that between the North and the South there
were neither commercial nor moral sympa-
thy-that at every State line passports were
demanded, and a tariff set--wh1 must not
shrink from describing the terrible conse-
quences; stagnatioD Of trade; the silence Of
brotherly counsel; the constant feuds; the
multiplication of armies; the Cair-!kc,
extermlnating wars; the overthrow of law
by military dictators; the utter ruin Of all
that makes US prosperous at home and re-
spected abroad; TIE sure catastrophe, moral
and national death! o that those who, for
any reason. talk lightly of dissolvipg this
Union. would consider the immensely great
er evils such a rupture would inevitably
cause, the awful guilt it would bring upon
themselves! Whatever may be cant Of
words, no lover of law could ever kindle
The torch of such incendiarism, no lover Of
peace provoke such tra,ricidal slaughter, no
lover of freedom plot for such general slave
nv, no lover of God and man undermine
the eminent watch-tOwer whose light is now
shedding over the world such bright promise
of universal brotherhood. Were it pos
sible that an American womb could be so
cursed, as TO bring forth so diabolica a mon
ster, and the malignant Erostra,,is could be
successful, loud, bitter, heaven compel
! ling cry would 60 up from all the earth,
swelled Ivy generation after generation, until
| the final fires shall have swept to he'll all ira
ces of human crimes: "Anathema .4nalh-
/ ena! ANATHEMA MARANArHAm
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