Southern speakers explained that slavery was a thing of which
a non-resident could not judge properly; that what appeared to an
outsider as a lack of prosperity was the enjoyment of life by a people
not devoted to the sordid aspects of existence; that slavery was a
matter for home rule and did not concern the other half of the Union.
The Northern contingent replied that slavery was a menace to free
labour and that their devotion to all parts of the Union, as well as
their right of self-preservation, warranted their interference. Then
the Southern speakers taunted them with Shays's Rebellion, the whiskey
insurrection, and the Hartford Convention, as proofs of their devotion
to the Union. The people of New York were reproached with wishing to
deprive Southern people of their slave property, although they
themselves still held more than ten thousand slaves and held them under
protection of the State laws. One Southern speaker came very near the
truth when he predicted that the census for 1820 would show fully
twenty thousand slaves still held in bondage in the Northern States.
A long discussion arose over the number of troops each section had
furnished to the Revolutionary War and upon the number of distinguished
men bred in each section.
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