It is hard to stay the march of events, or confute the logic of time. Even as far back as the beginning of the Union, men had foreseen the coming storm, with foreboding, yet these men were no wiser than the Massachusetts men of 1774; for at the time of the Union slavery might have been so restricted that it would eventually have died out in the land, or a way provided for the gradual emancipation of the blacks. Such steps were indeed talked of, but not consummated. So the nation was allowed to drift on, and the two opposing systems were left to work out their own results. In 1819 Missouri asked for admission into the Union. Her doing so, with a constitution recognizing slavery, proved a rock of danger to the Republic, the wisest statesmen found it hard to steer clear of. It provoked violent opposition at the North, and equally vehement support in the South. Under French rule the people of the nascent State held slaves. Those who had since come in were mostly from slaveholding States, and wanted to have slavery recognized as part of their social and political system. They demanded this, not as a privilege, but as a right guaranteed to them by the Constitution itself, in which property in slaves was distinctly recognized. So they stood firm for what they considered their rights, defending slavery from the charge of immorality, or inhumanity of man to man, as men would the most righteous cause. The North contended, broadly, that slavery was a crime, discountenanced by Christian people and enlightened thought everywhere, of which the nation should purge itself. It was said that the idea of a nation being free, when it countenanced holding men in bondage, was a mockery of freedom. Many construed the ordinance of 1787 to have forbidden, if not in its letter, at least in spirit, the formation of slave States out of newly acquired territory. But these men did not propose to interfere with slavery in the States where it already existed. Around these two differing ideas the men of the North and South clustered themselves. Underlying all, and governing all, was the conviction that a check to the extension of slavery meant a check to the political power of the South itself. This view made the South a unit, while in the North public sentiment was divided, for many there deprecated agitation of the question, as the entering wedge which should split the Republic asunder. When, therefore, Congress took up the bill for the admission of Missouri, the opponents of slavery met it with the condition that no slaves should afterward be brought into the new State, while all children, born in it subsequent to its admission, should be free at the age of twenty-five years. In time this condition would have made Missouri a free State.