to make occasional concession to the demands of slavery. Thus both found the slavery question an exceedingly troublesome and dangerous one, and both were afraid of it. But, whatever might be done to hold it back, it pressed irresistibly forward.
The Wilmot Proviso, aiming at the total exclusion of slavery from the newly acquired territories, although defeated in the Senate, was certain to rise up again. It served as a rallying cry all over the North, and profoundly alarmed the South. Southern statesmen, and, more clearly than any of them, Calhoun saw the greatness of their danger, and resolved to make a final stand against it. In February, 1847, Calhoun, true to his method of fighting fate with constitutional theories, introduced a set of resolutions declaring that the territories belonged to the several states in common; that any law depriving any citizen of a state of the right to emigrate with his property (slaves included) into any of the territories, would be a violation of the Constitution; and that no condition could be imposed upon new states to be admitted, other than that they should have a republican form of government. In other words, Calhoun, who advanced his positions step by step as the dangers to slavery increased, affirmed now substantially that the Constitution by its own force carried slavery into the territories of the United States. These resolutions were never voted upon in the Senate. But Southern legislatures adopted them as their doctrine,
