Although most of the men who spoke on the point were from the
regions where cotton was least cultivated, yet even Reid, of
Georgia, likened the south to an unfortunate man who "wears a cancer
in his bosom." [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 16 Cong., 1 Sess., I.,
1025.] Tyler of Virginia, afterwards president of the United States,
characterized slavery as a dark cloud, and asked, "Will you permit
the lightnings of its wrath to break upon the South when by the
interposition of a wise system of legislation you may reduce it to a
summer's cloud?" [Footnote: Ibid., II., 1391.] John Randolph, the
ultra-southerner, was quoted as saying that all the misfortunes of
his life were light in the balance when compared with the single
misfortune of having been born a master of slaves.
In addition to the argument of "mitigation by diffusion," the south
urged the injustice of excluding its citizens from the territories
by making it impossible for the southern planter to migrate thither
with his property.
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