ris of Ohio, who was then the only avowed Abolitionist
in the Senate, moved to strike out the words 'moral and
religious.' Had the motion prevailed, the effect would have
been to encourage agitation in the form in which it would be
most likely to be fatal to the South. It would have been a
direct encouragement to the Abolitionized clergy of the North
to take the very course which was taken by the 'three thousand
and fifty divines' who, in 1854, sacrilegiously assumed, 'in
the name of Almighty God, and in his presence,' to denounce the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise as 'a violation of plighted
faith and a breach of a national compact.' Subsequent events
have abundantly attested the truth of what Mr. Calhoun said,
when arguing against the motion, 'that the whole spirit of the
resolution hinged upon that word _religious_.'

"The vote taken on Mr. Morris's amendment stood as follows:
(Congressional Globe, volume 6, page 74.)

"Yeas--Messrs. Bayard, BUCHANAN, Clayton, Davis, McKeon,
Morris, Prentiss, Robbins, Ruggles, Smyth of Indiana,
Southward, Swift, Tipton, and Webster--14.

"Nays--Messrs. Allen, Black, Brown, Calhoun, Clay of Alabama,
Clay of Kentucky, Cuthbert, Fulton, Hubbard, King, Knight,
Linn, Lumpkin, Lyon, Nicholas, Niles, Norvell, Pierce, Preston,
Rives, Roane, Robinson, Sevier, Smyth of Connecticut, Strange,
Walker, Wall, White, Williams, Wright, and Young--31.

"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: