Senators with Southern principles.” They looked at him beseechingly. They wished to support him and stand by the South; they would go as far as they could; but he must not put upon them loads too heavy for them to carry in their states; he must not threaten the right of petition; he must not impose upon the general government the duty of “strengthening” slavery, and of “increasing its stability;” he must not insist upon condemning as dangerous fanatics all those among their constituents who believed slavery to be “immoral and sinful.” He was indeed asking too much of them. Their embarrassment was pitiable to behold.
Clay stepped in with an intermediate proposition, after the debate had proceeded for several days, and the first resolutions of Calhoun's series, modified and amended, had been adopted. Clay had voted for them, “not,” as he said, “from any confidence in their healing virtues.” On the contrary, he thought, they were calculated, especially at the North, “to increase and exasperate, instead of diminishing and assuaging, the existing agitation.” What he thought necessary was to strengthen the Union sentiment. Calhoun was trying, by his resolutions, to rally the state-rights party. In Clay's opinion, the interests of the South should not be put in the exclusive safe-keeping of any one party, but of them all. He believed in the healing power of argument, reasoning, friendly discussion.
