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"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 ↗

"This is no time for inaction. [...] There has never been before and perhaps there will never occur again, a conjuncture of circumstances so favorable for the re-conquest of the position which the South has lost by successive compromises of its rights."

The Enquirer is not defending the Missouri Compromise repeal as a restoration of calm but urging it as an opportunity — a chance to recover ground the South believed it had given away in 1820 and 1850. It presses Southern readers to organize meetings and petitions rather than rely on Congress alone.

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