Whereupon, wisely conceiving
discretion to be the better part of valor, they beat a hasty retreat
back to their native air. The Massachusetts agents were driven out of
Charleston and New Orleans. Where was the sacred and glorious union
between Massachusetts and South Carolina and Louisiana that such things
were possible--were constantly occurring? The circumstance made a strong
impression on the State whose rights were thus grossly violated. It
helped to convert Massachusetts to its later opposition to slavery, and
to make its public sentiment more tolerant of the Garrisonian opposition
to the covenant with death and the agreement with hell. To the agitation
growing out of the scheme for the annexation of Texas must, however, be
ascribed the premium among all the anti-Union working facts and forces
of the first few years after Garrison and his coadjutors had raised the
cry of "No union with slaveholders." This agitation renewed the
intensity and sectionalism of the then almost forgotten struggle over
the admission of Missouri nearly a quarter of a century before, and
which was concluded by the Missouri compromise. This settlement was at
the time considered quite satisfactory to the South. But Calhoun took an
altogether different view of the matter twenty years later. The
arrangement by which the South was excluded from the upper portion of
the Louisiana Territory he came to regard as a cardinal blunder on the
part of his section.
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