Note 962 — Chapter X

J. B. Robinson, Pictures of Slavery and Anti-Slavery, 1863, pp. 332, 333; M. G. McDougall, Fugitive Slaves, p. 70; Rhodes, History of the United States, Vol. II, p. 74. Mr. Rhodes says of the personal liberty bills: "They were dangerously near the nullification of a United States law, and had not the provocation seemed great, would not have been adopted by people who had drunk in with approval Webster's idea of nationality.... While they were undeniably conceived in a spirit of bad faith towards the South, they were a retaliation for the grossly bad faith involved in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Nullification cannot be defended, but in a balancing of the wrongs of the South and the North, it must be averred that in this case the provocation was vastly greater than the retaliation."