Senator Thomas, who represented Illinois, which,
as we have seen, was divided in its interests on the question of
slavery, and who, as the vote showed, could produce a tie in the
Senate, moved a compromise amendment, providing for the admission of
Missouri as a slave state and for the prohibition of slavery north
of 36 degrees 30' in the rest of the Louisiana purchase; and on the
next day his amendment passed the Senate by a vote of 34 to 10.
The debate in the Senate was marked by another speech of Rufus King,
just re-elected a senator from New York by an almost unanimous vote.
With this prestige, and the knowledge that the states of
Pennsylvania and New York stood behind him, he reiterated his
arguments with such power that John Quincy Adams, who listened to
the debate, wrote in his diary that "the great slave-holders in the
House gnawed their lips and clenched their fists as they heard him."
[Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, IV., 522; see Cong. Globe, 30 Cong., 2
Sess., App. 63-67.]
The case for the south was best presented by William Pinkney, of
Maryland, the leader of the American bar, a man of fashion, but an
orator of the first rank.
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