the other, to accomplish their own purposes. Many courageous men denounced it as such—as a game to be kept up for the political benefit of the players; and deplored the blindness which could not see their determination to keep it agoing to the last possible moment, and to the production of the greatest possible degree of national and sectional exasperation. It was while this contention was thus raging, that Mr. Calhoun wrote a confidential letter to a member of the Alabama legislature, hugging this proviso to his bosom as a fortunate event-as a means of "forcing the issue" between the North and the South; and deprecating any adjustment, compromise, or defeat of it, as a misfortune to the South: and which letter has since come to light. Gentle and credulous people, who believed him to be in earnest when he was sounding the tocsin to rouse the States, instigating them to pass disunion resolutions, and stirring up both national and village orators to attack the proviso unto death: such persons must be amazed to

tiate for Florida (which ended in the acquisition of Louisiana), was plead as a precedent; and justly. Congress, at this second application, granted the appropriation; but while it was depending, Mr. Wilmot, a member of Congress, from Pennsylvania, moved a proviso, that no part of the territory to be acquired should be open to the introduction of slavery. It was a proposition not necessary for the purpose of excluding slavery, as the only territory to be acquired was that of New Mexico and California, where slavery was already prohibited by the Mexican laws and constitution; and where it could not be carried until those laws should be repealed, and a law for slavery passed. The proviso was nugatory, and could answer no purpose but that of bringing on a slavery agitation in the United States; for which purpose it was immediately seized upon by Mr. Calhoun and his friends, and treated as the greatest possible outrage and injury to the slave States. Congress was occupied with this proviso for two sessions, became excessively heated on the sub-read in that exhumed letter, written during the ject, and communicated its heat to the legislatures of the slave States-by several of which conditional disunion resolutions were passed. Every where, in the slave States, the Wilmot Proviso became a Gorgon's head-a chimera dire—a watchword of party, and the synonyme

fiercest of the strife, these ominous words:

compromise or adjustment of the proviso, or "With this impression I would regard any even its defeat. without meeting the danger in its whole length and breadth, as very unforwithout removing the danger. or materially tunate for us. It would lull us to sleep again, diminishing it.”

of civil war and the dissolution of the Union. Many patriotic members were employed in resisting the proviso as a bona fide cause of break- This issue to be forced was a separation of ing up the Union, if adopted; many amiable the slave and the free States; the means, a comand gentle-tempered members were employed in mercial non-intercourse, in shutting the slave devising modes of adjusting and compromising State seaports against the vessels of the free it; a few, of whom Mr. Benton was one, pro-States; the danger to be met, was in the trial duced the laws and the constitution of Mexico to of this issue, by the means indicated; which show that New Mexico and California were free were simply high treason when pursued to the from slavery; and argued that neither party overt act. Mr. Calhoun had flinched from that had any thing to fear, or to hope—the free soil act in the time of Jackson, but he being dead, party nothing to fear, because the soil was now and no more Jacksons at the head of the govfree; the slave soil party nothing to hope, be- ernment, he rejoiced in another chance of meetcause they could not take a step to make it ing the danger-meeting it in all its length and slave soil, having just invented the dogma of breadth; and deprecated the loss of the proviso "No power in Congress to legislate upon slave- as the loss of this chance. ry in territories." Never were two parties so completely at loggerheads about nothing: never did two parties contend more furiously against the greatest possible evil. Close observers, who had been watching the progress of the slavery agitation since its inauguration in Congress in 1835, knew it to be a game played by the abolitionists on one side and the disunionists on

Truly the abolitionists and the nullifiers were necessary to each other-the two halves of a pair of shears, neither of which could cut until joined together. Then the map of the Union was in danger; for in their conjunction, that map was cloth between the edges of the shears, And this was that Wilmot Proviso, which for two years convulsed the Union, and prostrated men

of firmness and patriotism-a thing of nothing in itself, but magnified into a hideous reality, and seized upon to conflagrate the States and dissolve the Union. The Wilmot Proviso was not passed: that chance of forcing the issue was lost: another had to be found, or made.

CHAPTER CLXVII.

volved in circumlocutory phrases, are intelligible to the point, that Congress has no power to prohibit slavery in a territory, and that the exercise of such a power would be a breach of the constitution, and leading to the subversion of the Union. Ostensibly the complaint was, that the emigrant from the slave State was not allowed to carry his slave with him: in reality it was that he was not allowed to carry the State law along with him to protect his slave. Placed in that light, which is the true one, the complaint is absurd: presented as applying to a

MR. CALHOUN'S SLAVERY RESOLUTIONS, AND piece of property instead of the law of the

DENIAL OF THE RIGHT OF CONGRESS TO PRO-
HIBIT SLAVERY IN A TERRITORY.

On Friday, the 19th of February, Mr. Calhoun introduced into the Senate his new slavery resolutions, prefaced by an elaborate speech, and requiring an immediate vote upon them. They were in these words:

Resolved, That the territories of the United States belong to the several States composing this Union, and are hell by them as their joint and common property.

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Resolved, That Congress, as the joint agent and representative of the States of this Union, has no right to make any law, or do any act whatever, that shall directly, or by its effects, make any discrimination between the States of this Union, by which any of them shall be deprived of its full and equal right in any territory of the United States acquired or to be acquired. "Resolved, That the enactment of any law which should directly, or by its effects, deprive the citizens of any of the States of this Union from emigrating, with their property, into any of the territories of the United States, will make such discrimination, and would, therefore, be a violation of the constitution, and the rights of the States from which such citizens emigrated, and in derogation of that perfect equality which belongs to them as members of this Union, and would tend directly to subvert the Union itself. Resolved, That it is a fundamental principle in our political creed, that a people, in forming a constitution, have the unconditional right to form and adopt the government which they may think best calculated to secure their liberty, prosperity, and happiness; and that, in conformity thereto, no other condition is imposed by the federal constitution on a State, in order to be admitted into this Union, except that its constitution shall be republican; and that the imposition of any other by Congress would not only be in violation of the constitution, but in direct conflict with the principle on which our political system rests."

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State, it becomes specious-has deluded whole
communities; and has led to rage and resent-
ment, and hatred of the Union. In support of
these resolutions the mover made a speech in
which he showed a readiness to carry out in ac-
tion, to their extreme results, the doctrines they
contained, and to appeal to the slave-holding
States for their action, in the event that the
This was the
Senate should not sustain them.
concluding part of his speech:

"Well, sir, what if the decision of this body shall deny to us this high constitutional right, not the less clear because deduced from the whole body of the instrument and the nature of the subject to which it relates? What, then, is the question? I will not undertake to decide. It is a question for our constituents-the slave-holding States. A solemn and a great question. If the decision should be adverse, I trust and do believe that they will take under solemn consideration what they ought to do. I give no advice. It would be hazardous and dangerous for me to do so. But I may speak as an individual member of that section of the Union. There I drew my first breath. There are all my hopes. There is my family and connections. I am a planter-a cotton planter. I am a Southern man, and a slave-holder; a kind and a merciful one, I trust-and none the worse for being a slave-holder. I say, for one, I would rather meet any extremity upon earth than give up one inch of our equality-one inch of what belongs to us as members of this great republic. What, acknowledge inferiority! The surrender of life is nothing to sinking down into acknowledged inferiority.

"I have examined this subject largely-widely. I think I see the future if we do not stand up as we ought. In my humble opinion, in that case, the condition of Ireland is prosperous and happy-the condition of Hindostan is prosperous and happy-the condition of Jamaica is prosperous and happy, to what the Southern States will be if they should not now stand up These resolutions, although the sense is in- manfully in defence of their rights."

When these resolutions were read, Mr. Ben- the federal government-contrary to its practon rose in his place, and called them "fire- tice during that time-contrary to Mr. Calbrand." Mr. Calhoun said he had expected the houn's slavery resolutions of 1838-contrary support of Mr. Benton as the representative to his early and long support of the Missouri of a slave-holding State." Mr. Benton answered compromise-and contrary to the re-enactment that it was impossible that he could have ex- of that line by the authors of the Texas anpected such a thing. Then, said Mr. Calhoun, nexation law. That re-enactment had taken I shall know where to find the gentleman. To place only two years before, and was in the which Mr. Benton: "I shall be found in the very words of the anti-slavery ordinance of '87, right place on the side of my country and the and of the Missouri compromise prohibition of Union." This answer, given on that day, and 1820; and was voted for by the whole body of on the spot, is one of the incidents of his life the annexationists, and was not only conceived which Mr. Benton will wish posterity to remem- and supported by Mr. Calhoun, then Secretary ber. of State, but carried into effect by him in the despatch of that messenger to Texas in the expiring moments of his power. The words of the re-enactment were: "And in such State, or States as shall be formed out of said territory north of the said Missouri compromise

for crime) shall be prohibited." This clause re-established that compromise line in all that long extent of it which was ceded to Spain by the treaty of 1819, which became Texian by her separation from Mexico, and which became slave soil under her laws and constitution. So that, up to the third day of March, in the year 1845 not quite two years before the date of these resolutions-Mr. Calhoun by authentic acts, and the two Houses of Congress by recorded votes, and President Tyler by his approving signature, acknowledged the power of Congress to prohibit slavery in a territory! and not only acknowledged the power, but exerted it! and actually prohibited slavery in a long slip of country, enough to make a "State or States," where it then legally existed. This fact was formally brought out in the chapter of this volume which treats of the legislative annexation of Texas; and those who wish to see the proceeding in detail may find it in the journals of the two Houses of Congress, and in the congressional history of the time.

Mr. Calhoun demanded the prompt consideration of his resolutions, giving notice that he would call them up the next day, and press them to a speedy and final vote. He did call them up, but never called for the vote, nor was any ever had: nor would a vote have any prac-line, slavery or involuntary servitude (except tical consequence, one way or the other. The resolutions were abstractions, without application. They asserted a constitutional principle, which could not be decided, one way or the other, by the separate action of the Senate; not even in a bill, much less in a single and barren set of resolves. No vote was had upon them. The condition had not happened on which they were to be taken up by the slave States; but they were sent out to all such States, and adopted by some of them; and there commenced the great slavery agitation, founded upon the dogma of 66 no power in Congress to legislate upon slavery in the territories," which has led to the abrogation of the Missouri compromise linewhich has filled the Union with distractionand which is threatening to bring all federal legislation, and all federal elections, to a mere sectional struggle, in which one-half of the States is to be arrayed against the other. The resolves were evidently introduced for the mere purpose of carrying a question to the slave States on which they could be formed into a unit against the free States; and they answered that purpose as well on rejection by the Senate as with it; and were accordingly used in conformity to their design without any such rejection, which-it cannot be repeated too oftencould in no way have decided the constitutional question which they presented.

These were new resolutions-the first of their kind in the (almost) sixty years' existence of

These resolutions of 1847, called fire-brand at the time, were further characterized as nullification a few days afterwards, when Mr. Benton said of them, that, "as Sylla saw in the young Cæsar many Mariuses, so did he see in them many nullifications.”

THE SLAVERY AGITATION: DISUNION: KEY TO spirit to defend ourselves and our institutions."