Disunion Feed

"A year ago it would have been difficult to find a man who would believe in the possibility of disturbing the Missouri Compromise. [...] How truly is here illustrated the fact that it is only the first step in crime that costs. When that is taken the downward descent is easy."

The editorial notes that Senator Atchison had himself called repeal impracticable and given it up, before the Administration reversed within a year. "Doughface" was the standing epithet for a Northern man who voted with the South; the Tribune is arguing that the ground of the possible had moved, not just the votes.

Read it in the original — Furman Secession Era Editorials transcription ↗

"Were it simply a bad measure, we might speak of it calmly and measuredly; but as an act of deliberate and bad faith, impelled by the most sordid motives and threatening the most calamitous results, we must treat it as we do other gigantic perfidies and crimes. [...] The conflagration it threatens is not to be extinguished by jets of rosewater."

Written as an answer to critics of the paper's own tone — the Tribune is defending its language, not describing the bill. The question in the headline is asked literally: whether the Compromise of 1850 was understood at the time to repeal the Missouri line, or whether that reading was invented afterwards.

Read it in the original — Furman Secession Era Editorials transcription ↗