For many years the subject of slavery, in its varied aspects, had been constantly and hotly discussed in all political and religious journals, on the stump, in the pulpit, and in the Congress of the United States. The higher law doctrine, propounded by William H. Seward, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854, the Kansas war, Lincoln’s celebrated debate with Douglas, and his pregnant declaration in 1858, that the nation could not continue to exist half slave and half free, that “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” had greatly agitated the whole nation. In the hearts of pro-slavery men, vengeful fire was smouldering; it needed only an added breath to make it shoot up into a devouring flame. The apprehensiveness and extreme sensitiveness of pro-slavery Missouri manifested itself in the winter of 1859–60, through its legislature. That body of lawmakers passed a bill by an overwhelming majority, expelling from the State all free negroes. There were more than a thousand of that class in St. Louis, and a large majority of these were females, doing domestic service in the best families of the city. The excitement caused by this short-sighted action of the legislature was intense. The bill enacted was a declaration in the form of law, that the presence of free negroes was a menace to slavery. Many men in St. Louis were asking with flushed faces, “What shall be done to meet this emergency, to avert this calamity?” I met on the street one of the coolest men that it has been my lot to know during a long life, and even he, whose spirit never seemed to be ruffled by any exasperating event, was hot with indignation. With great vehemence he denounced the barbarous legislation, and said that something must be done to thwart its purpose. But on inquiry I found that he was unable to suggest any line of action by which this vicious legislation could be neutralized.