concession. “Shall we yield, or stand firm? That is the question,” he said. “If we yield an inch, we are gone.” He was certainly right. But to be entirely right he should have added: “If we stand firm, we are gone likewise.”
Clay was more hopeful, because he saw the real nature of the trouble less clearly. A natural compromiser, he believed in the efficacy of compromise in all cases. His resolutions were intended to be a compromise between slavery and the principles of republican government. The greatest stress he laid upon those referring to the District of Columbia and to Florida, in which he neither affirmed nor denied the power of Congress to abolish slavery, but deprecated its exercise as “inexpedient.” They were offered to replace those of Calhoun concerning the territories and the annexation of Texas, and Clay actually succeeded in securing their adoption as substitutes. The rest of Calhoun's resolutions, the keenest edges of which had been much blunted by amendments, passed the Senate by a large vote.
The practical result was nothing, except more agitation of the slavery question. Calhoun had forgotten that senate resolutions will not determine public sentiment, but that public sentiment will at last determine the action of senates; and also that the struggle about slavery was to be, in the last resort, a struggle of moral and material forces, and not of constitutional theories. The greatest thinker among the champions of slavery tried to fight fate with paper balls.
