MR. CALHOUN, MR. DICKINSON, AND MR. CASS. 73

intended calling them up for consideration, when Mr. Calhoun walked up to the place where they were deposited, took them from the table for perusal, and, after having read them over, walked behind the Vice President's chair and beckoned me to come to him. I joined him accordingly, whereupon he, in a very excited manner, called my attention to the phraseology of Mr. Dickinson's aforesaid resolutions, and said that they were worse than the Wilmot Proviso; that the constitutional doctrine set forth in them was infinitely dangerous, and concluded by declaring that he intended to denounce them in the most emphatic manner whenever Mr. Dickinson should call them from the table. I was most deeply and painfully surprised, conceiving, as I did, that the adoption of just such resolutions as Mr. Dickinson had offered by the two Houses of Congress, and the speedy acquiescence in the declaration of principle which they contained, would effectually guard the quiet of the country by defeating the Wilmot Proviso policy, or the policy of excluding slavery from the territories of the Union by congressional action, and would thus rescue the South and her cherished local interests from menaced subversion. I expostulated mildly and respectfully with Mr. Calhoun against pursu ing the course which he had avowed his determination. previously to adopt, and, without incurring the hazard of inflaming him additionally by informing him that my adhesion to the resolutions of Mr. Dickinson had been already pledged, I proceeded to the seat of General Cass, informed him of what had just occurred, and this gentleman, at my instance, went with me to the seat of Mr. Dickinson, and united his efforts with mine in persuading

D

him that he would decline pressing the Senate to a vote upon his resolutions until a better understanding could be had, so as, if possible, to avoid any division among those who were united in opposing the adoption of any restrictive legislation in regard to slavery in the territories. Mr. Dickinson, with a display of that conciliatory and obliging temper for which all who know him are prepared to give him credit, declared at once that he would not urge the Senate to action upon his resolutions immediately, that he would call them up in a few days for consideration; and that, after having concisely discussed them, as he had it in contemplation to do, and after having thus set himself right in the view of his own particular constituents, he should be willing that the resolutions should then lie upon the table until all interested in preserving the peace of the country should be ready to take some decided legislation on the matters embraced therein. This arrangement being made known to Mr. Calhoun, he acquiesced therein, and thus for a short period an extended and unprofitable controversy in the Senate upon the territorial question was avoided. It is due to Mr. Dickinson to state here that he afterward was heard at considerable length in exposition of the true meaning of the resolutions which he had offered, and in vindication of the principle of non-intervention which they set forth, and that he delivered on that occasion a manly, well-reasoned, and eminently patriotic speech, which greatly enhanced his reputation both as a statesman and

orator.

I should mention here that, early in the session of Congress, General Cass, in an interview which I had with

THE NICHOLSON LETTER.

75

him, informed me that he had just received a letter from Mr. Nicholson, of Tennessee, then an ardent political friend of his, as I certainly was myself, requesting an expression of his views on the question just noticed, and that he had drawn up a reply thereto, which he desired me to read. I read it accordingly, made several comparatively immaterial suggestions in regard to the phraseology, which he kindly consented to modify, when I urged him to give publication to the correspondence at once, being well satisfied that it was eminently important that all proper efforts should be made to get the general mind of the country matured as soon as possible upon the new and difficult question so ably discussed by General Cass in that now far-famed letter. He agreed, in case his political friends generally in Congress should regard the publication of the letter as desirable, to allow it to be inserted in the newspapers without delay. I then drew up a formal letter to General Cass, asking the publication of this letter, to which I took care to obtain the signatures of a considerable number of congressional members alike from the North and from the South, and it was thereupon given to the public.

Much has been said at different times both in censure and in commendation of this letter-far more, perhaps, than was either needful or advantageous. It has been accused of vagueness and ambiguity by some, while others have not hesitated to speak of it as one of the happiest emanations of its distinguished author. For my own part, though I have never for a moment regretted my instrumentality in procuring its publication in the manner described, and though I do yet most fully con

cur in the leading idea embodied in it, that the question of whether slavery should or should not be allowed to exist in the new territories, might safely and properly have been "left to the people of the confederacy in their respective local governments," yet have I never thought that the Nicholson Letter was in all respects so explicit in its phraseology as it might have been, or equal, in point of mere literary finish, to many of the numerous productions of its venerable author's most gifted pen. General Cass certainly owed his nomination for the presidency by the Democratic party in 1848 in some degree to the sound and conservative doctrine which he had dared thus seasonably to avow, and I shall ever feel proud of having zealously sustained him in the presidential contest which soon ensued, as the bold and uncompromising champion of the principle of non-intervention; which principle was destined, in the perilous crisis of 1850, to become the distinguishing feature of those measures of compromise and adjustment, the introduction and successful advocacy of which were to gild the evening of Mr. Clay's eventful life with a moral effulgence which can never become extinct.

I should gladly close this chapter with the tender of my humble tribute of applause to the venerable octogenarian statesman who has been thus incidentally alluded to. No one admires him more than I do, and no one has more reason to cherish for him a fervent and solid attachment. But what can my humble pen record, either of his rare moral graces or his eminent public services, which is not already familiarly known to his grateful and admiring countrymen or to the world at large? He

has himself written and spoken so often and so ably, he has so long been the honored incumbent of high official positions, and has so little at any time sought to conceal either his conduct or his motives from the view of men, that I might justly despair, were I even sufficiently presumptuous to hazard the effort, to add in the least degree to the fullness and brightness of that fame which already challenges the admiration alike of his own countrymen and of the dwellers in other lands, and before the mild and simple grandeur of which even the living calumniators of party and of faction have been at last completely humbled into silence.

"Serus in cœlum redeas !”