These historical facts are referred to here that the reader may be reminded that slavery was a delicate question in Missouri; that her people were super-sensitive about it since she was the first territory upon which the National Congress sought to impose the prohibition of slavery as a condition precedent to her admission into the Union, which, up to that time, had been a matter left to the people of the territory seeking admission to determine for themselves. Of course this attempt at {XXIII} restriction of slavery was made by northern members of the national Congress. [5] All the sentiment for the restriction of slavery was in the North. In 1831 the sentiment for the positive abolition of slavery had made such progress in Massachusetts, that William Lloyd Garrison established in Boston "_The Liberator_," a paper which advocated "the immediate and unconditional emancipation of every slave in the United States." As a result of this agitation anti-slavery societies were formed and active measures taken to advocate these opinions by means of lectures and pamphlets. These extreme measures against slavery did not meet with the approval of all or even the majority of the people of New England, much less with the approval of the people of other northern states. Still this agitation arose and was chiefly supported in New England. It will not be difficult to understand, therefore, that any considerable number of people from that section of the Union immigrating into a slave state would arouse suspicion; especially when that immigration was into a slave state upon which, when as a territory she had made application for admission into the Union, prohibition of slavery was sought to be enforced by the northern members of the National Congress. Nor will it be sufficient to dispel this suspicion to aver that these particular immigrants from New England, and other northern states are not abolitionists; that they take no part with, and do not share the fanatical sentiments of, the abolitionists; that their objects and purposes are of an entirely different and larger character.