of those rights, no clause or article of the constitution of the United States should, within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, be so understood as to authorize any person whatsoever to claim the property or possession of a human being as a slave; and he would prohibit by law the delivery of any fugitive upon the claim of his master. All which, he said, should be done, not to violate, but to redeem from violation, the constitution of the United States. It was indeed to be expected that such laws would again be met by retaliatory laws of Missouri and the other slaveholding states, and the consequences would be a dissolution _de facto_ of the Union; but that dissolution would be commenced by the article in the Missouri constitution. "That article," declared Mr. Adams, "is itself a dissolution of the Union. If acquiesced in, it will change the terms of the federal compact--change its terms by robbing thousands of citizens of their rights. And what citizens? The poor, the unfortunate, the helpless, already cursed by the mere color of their skin; already doomed by their complexion to drudge in the lowest offices of society; excluded by their color from all the refined enjoyments of life accessible to others; excluded from the benefits of a liberal education,--from the bed, the table, and all the social comforts, of domestic life. This barbarous article deprives them of the little remnant of right yet left them--their rights as citizens and as men. Weak and defenceless as they are, so much the more sacred the obligation of the Legislatures of the states to which they belong to defend their lawful rights. I would defend them, should the dissolution of the Union be the consequence; for it would be, not to the defence, but to the violation of their rights, to which all the consequences would be imputable; and, if the dissolution of the Union must come, let it come from no other cause but this. If slavery be the destined sword, in the hand of the destroying angel, which is to sever the ties of this Union, the same sword will cut asunder the bonds of slavery itself."