Accidents and events have given this part a strange pre-eminence-- under Jackson's administration proclaimed for treason; since, at the head of the government and of the Democratic party. The death of Harrison, and the accession of Tyler, was their first great lift; the election of Mr. Pierce was their culminating point. It not only gave them the government, but power to pass themselves for the Union party, and for democrats; and to stigmatize all who refused to go with them as disunionists and abolitionists. And to keep up this classification is the object of the eleven pages of the message which calls for this Review--unhappily assisted in that object by the conduct of a few real abolitionists (not five per centum of the population of the free States); but made to stand, in the eyes of the South, for the whole." (123) Hist., etc., Ex., _Dred Scott Case_, pp. 184-5. XXX PROPHECY AS TO SLAVERY'S FATE: ALSO AS TO DISUNION We are approaching the period for the fulfilment of prophecy in relation to the perpetuity of human slavery in the United States. We summarize a few of the prophecies made by distinguished American statesmen and citizens. George Washington, Patrick Henry, and other Virginia statesmen and slaveholders at the close of the Revolution predicted that slaves would be emancipated, or they would acquire their freedom violently. These patriots advocated emancipation. The stumbling-block to abolition in Virginia at that time was, what to do with the blacks. The white population could not reconcile themselves to the idea of living on an equality with them, as they deemed they must if the blacks were free. As early as 1782 Jefferson expressed his serious forebodings: "Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. . . . "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever. The way, I hope, is preparing, under the auspices of Heaven, for a total emancipation." The anti-slavery societies when they first met in annual convention (1804) proclaimed that "Freedom and slavery cannot long exist together." John Quincy Adams, in 1843, prophesied: "I am satisfied slavery will not go down until it goes down in blood."(124) Abraham Lincoln, at the beginning of his celebrated debate with Douglas (1858) expressed his belief that this nation could not exist "half slave and half free." He had, however, made the same declaration in a letter to a Kentucky friend to whom he wrote: "Experience has demonstrated, I think, that there is no peaceful extinction of slavery in prospect for us. . . .