Such sentiments drew a sharp rebuke from the opposing side. Slaves
might even then be in the gallery, it was said, to overhear such
revolutionary doctrine.
So persistent were members in hunting up and interpreting various
phrases of the Constitution, each to suit his own views, that one
disgusted Republican protested against "a species of special pleading
which hunts for powers in words and sentences taken here and there
from the instrument and patched together forming something like a
pretext for the exercise of power palpably interdicted by the plain
sense and intention of the instrument." The cry of "home rule" for the
State of Missouri on the slavery question was the forerunner of
"squatter sovereignty" two decades later. Calhoun's later plea that
any citizen had the right to migrate to any part of the co-operative
public lands and to carry with him all his property found a first
hearing in this debate on the admission of Missouri.
The equilibrium maintained so carefully in the Senate had long since
disappeared in the House because of the varying distribution of
population. Of the 180 members who considered the Missouri question
in the more popular branch, 104 came from the free States and only 76
from the slave States.
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