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- [T]his momentous question, like a fire ball in the night,
awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell
of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for the moment. But this is a
reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding with
a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to
the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new
irritation will mark it deeper and deeper."
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to a Massachusetts congressman
This excerpt expresses Jefferson's alarm about the recent passage of the
a. Fugitive Slave Laws.
c. Compromise of 1850.
b. Alien and Sedition Acts. d. Missouri Compromise.