dishonest one successfully misrepresent me.

In order to a clear understanding of what the Missouri Compromise is, a
short history of the preceding kindred subjects will perhaps be proper.

When we established our independence, we did not own or claim the country
to which this compromise applies. Indeed, strictly speaking, the
Confederacy then owned no country at all; the States respectively owned
the country within their limits, and some of them owned territory beyond
their strict State limits. Virginia thus owned the Northwestern
Territory--the country out of which the principal part of Ohio, all
Indiana, all Illinois, all Michigan, and all Wisconsin have since been
formed. She also owned (perhaps within her then limits) what has since
been formed into the State of Kentucky. North Carolina thus owned what is
now the State of Tennessee; and South Carolina and Georgia owned, in
separate parts, what are now Mississippi and Alabama. Connecticut, I
think, owned the little remaining part of Ohio, being the same where they
now send Giddings to Congress and beat all creation in making cheese.

These territories, together with the States themselves, constitute all
the country over which the Confederacy then claimed any sort of
jurisdiction. We were then living under the Articles of Confederation,
which were superseded by the Constitution several years afterward. The
question of ceding the territories to the General Government was set on
foot. Mr. Jefferson,--the author of the Declaration of Independence, and
otherwise a chief actor in the Revolution; then a delegate in Congress;
afterward, twice President; who was, is, and perhaps will continue to be,
the most distinguished politician of our history; a Virginian by birth
and continued residence, and withal a slaveholder,--conceived the idea of
taking that occasion to prevent slavery ever going into the Northwestern