Mr. Tibbatts, of Kentucky, was equally frank with Mr. Dargan : " If the people of the South are to be told that in acquiring territory, f6r which their blood is to be spilled and their treasures expended, they are realizing benefits for others in Which they are to have no share, and that they are, in effect, to be excluded from territoiy which their own blood and ti-easure have helped to win, then I am against keeping one foot of Mexican territory—I am opposed to carrying on this war on such terms"
REVIEW OF THE r.IEXlCA?; WAR. 189 Mr. Calhoun, in great excitement, exclaimed : " I am a Southern man and a slaveliolder, a kind and merciful one I trust, and none the worse for being a slaveholder.
I say for one I would rather meet any extremity upon earth than give up one inch of our equality—one inch of what belongs to us as members of this great RepubHc. What ! acknowledge our inferiority ! The surrender of life is nothing to sinking down into acknowledged infer- iority." / Yet this kind and merciful slaveholder had devoted the energies of his life to keeping in acknowledged inferiority, ignorance, and degradation, millions of his fellow-men and fellow-countrymen, and was at this very moment opposing an effort to prevent immense regions being peopled with beasts of burden iniiuman form.
Mr. Bagby, of Alabama, averred, " If the time should come when this principle was to be acted upon, that no more territory was to be acquired lest Southern institu- tions should exist in such territory, he would say. Away WITH THE Union." This gentleman, the more effectually to secure the object of the war, introduced into the Senate x resolution declaring that, " If territory is hereafter ac- quired by the United States, either by treaty or conquest, it shall not be competent for the treaty-making power or Congress to exclude slavery from such territory, either by treaty, stipulation, or by act of Congress."