ee Cong. Reg. vol. 1, p. 310, 11.

POSTSCRIPT

My apology for adding a _postscript_, to a discussion already perhaps
too protracted, is the fact that the preceding sheets were in the hands
of the printer, and all but the concluding pages had gone through the
press, before the passage of Mr. Calhoun's late resolutions in the
Senate of the United States. A proceeding so extraordinary,--if indeed
the time has not passed when _any_ acts of Congress in derogation of
freedom and in deference to slavery, can be deemed
extraordinary,--should not be suffered to pass in silence at such a
crisis as the present; especially as the passage of one of the
resolutions by a vote of 36 to 9, exhibits a shift of position on the
part of the South, as sudden as it is unaccountable, being nothing less
than the surrender of a fortress which until then they had defended with
the pertinacity of a blind and almost infuriated fatuity. Upon the
discussions during the pendency of the resolutions, and upon the vote,
by which they were carried, I make no comment, save only to record my
exultation in the fact there exhibited, that great emergencies are _true
touchstones_, and that henceforward, until this question is settled,
whoever holds a seat in Congress will find upon, and all around him, a
pressure strong enough to TEST him--a focal blaze that will find its way
through the carefully adjusted cloak of fair pretension, and the
sevenfold brass of two-faced political intrigue, and _no_-faced
_non-committalism_, piercing to the dividing asunder of joints and
marrow. Be it known to every northern man who aspires to a seat in
Congress, that hereafter it is the destiny of congressional action on
this subject, to be a MIGHTY REVELATOR--making secret thoughts public
property, and proclaiming on the house-tops what is whispered in the
ear--smiting off masks, and bursting open sepulchres beautiful
outwardly, and heaving up to the sun their dead men's bones. To such we
say,--_Remember the Missouri Question, and the fate of those who then
sold the North, and their own birthright_!

Passing by the resolutions generally without remark--the attention of
the reader is specially solicited to Mr. Clay's substitute for Mr.
Calhoun's fifth resolution.

"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 these states, including the ceded
terri