Secession Era Editorials Project

A Little Strange.

Detroit, Michigan, Free Press [Democratic]

(10 February 1854)

Is it not a little strange that that class of people who have hitherto scouted at the idea of "compromising with slavery" -- who have always fought against adhering in good faith to the Missouri line, and extending it to the Pacific -- and with whom the Wilmot proviso has been a sine qua non -- should suddenly have become sticklers for the Missouri compromise; a measure which, if they had the power, they would sweep from the statute book at a single dash, and erect upon its ruins a Wilmot proviso covering the whole territory of the Union?

Let not abolitionists talk to us of the sacredness of compromises! Nothing is sacred with them. Their professions are false as hell itself. Openly and boastingly they violate the Fugitive Slave Law, one of the compromise measures of 1850, and then have the audacity to turn around, and, with ill-concealed hypocrisy, prate about the sacredness of the Missouri act! Out upon such villainy. Out upon men who daily commit moral treason against their country. Sacredness of compromises, indeed!