"The fifth resolution to which Mr. Calhoun here referred, and which he justly regarded as the most important of all, and struggled most perseveringly to have passed without amendment, was strictly as follows:
"'Resolved, That the intermeddling of any State or States, or their citizens, to abolish slavery in this District, or in any of the Territories, on the ground, or under the pretext, that it is immoral or sinful, or the passage of any act or measure of Congress, with that view, would be a direct and dangerous attack on the institutions of all the slaveholding States.'
"This resolution covered the whole premises. It met the issue boldly and fully. No Southern Democrat can hesitate to say that it embodied a great truth, to which events have borne emphatic testimony. Mr. Clay, of Kentucky, moved to strike it out, and insert the following as a substitute:
"'Resolved, That when the District of Columbia was ceded by the States of Virginia and Maryland to the United States, domestic slavery existed in both of those States, including the ceded territory; and that, as it still continues in both of them, it could not be abolished within the District without a violation of that good faith which was implied in the cession, and in the acceptance of the territory, nor unless compensation were made for the slaves, without a manifest infringement of an amendment of the Constitution of the United States, nor without exciting a degree of just alarm and apprehension in the States recognizing slavery, far transcending, in mischievous tendency, any possible benefit which would be accomplished by the abolition.' (Congressional Globe, vol. 6, page 58.)
"The utter insufficiency of this temporizing amendment scarcely need be pointed out. Objectionable as it was in conceding to Congress the constitutional power to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and declaring against the exercise of that power only on the ground of inexpediency, it was still more so in this, that it made no reference whatever to the territories of the United States. The passage of Mr. Calhoun's resolution would have committed the Senate, not only against the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, but against the application of the Wilmot Proviso and kindred measures to the Territories. Mr. Clay's amendment was entirely silent on the subject. It is true, that in another resolution which he proposed to have adopted as an additional amendment, it was declared that the abolition of slavery in the Territory of Florida would be highly inexpedient, for the principal reason 'that it would be in violation of a solemn compromise made at a memorable and critical period in the history of this country, by which, while slavery was prohibited north, it was admitted south of the line of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude.' The defect in the first amendment can hardly be considered by Southern men as remedied by another which recognized the binding force of the Missouri Compromise.
"On the question to strike out Mr. Calhoun's resolution, and insert Mr. Clay's as an amendment, after it had been modified by striking out the part relating to compensation for slaves, the vote stood—yeas 19, nays 18. (Congressional Globe, vol. 6, page 62.) Mr. Buchanan's name stands recorded in the affirmative.
"On a subsequent occasion, Mr. Calhoun, with a view to infuse vitality into Mr. Clay's amendment, moved to insert that any attempt of Congress to abolish slavery in the Territories, 'would be a dangerous attack upon the States in which slavery exists.' Mr. Buchanan opposed the amendment, and it was in reply to his speech that Mr. Calhoun made the remarks which may be found in the third volume of his works, pages 194 to 196, and which he commenced by saying that 'the remarks of the Senator from Pennsylvania were of such a character that he could not permit them to pass in silence.'
"From these votes, and this language of Mr. Buchanan, it is clear:
"1st. That he was not opposed to the religious agitation of the slavery question—a species of agitation which Mr. Calhoun justly regarded as more fatal than any other.
"2d. That he recognized the constitutional power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, opposing its existence only on the ground of its inexpediency—a proposition which the position of Mr. Van Buren shows affords no reliable protection to Southern institutions.