could make slavery secure within it. “This [the slavery question] was the only question of sufficient potency,” he said, “to divide the Union, and divide it it would, or drench the country in blood if not arrested.” He saw the danger clearly. He felt instinctively that a people differing essentially in their notions of right and wrong cannot permanently remain bound together by voluntary union. But could he hope to avert the danger by the promulgation of mere abstractions? What he actually accomplished was to put the incompatibility of slavery with free institutions again in the strongest light.
A Senator from Indiana, Smith, promptly moved to add a proviso to Calhoun's resolutions, that nothing therein should be construed as expressing an opinion of the Senate adverse to the fundamental principles of this government: that “all men are created equal;” that the freedom of speech and of the press, and the rights of peaceable meeting and of petition, should never be abridged; that “error of opinion may be tolerated while reason is left free to combat it;” and that “the Union must be preserved.” He showed conclusively that, if the prohibition of “intermeddling” were enforced by effective legislation, all these fundamental principles of free government would have to yield. Here was again the logic of liberty put face to face with the logic of slavery.
Calhoun might have read the ultimate fate of his cause in the troubled faces of the “Northern
