Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/177

Rh States is incompatible with the liberty and safety of the European descendants. Their slavery forms an exception — an exception resulting from a stern and inexorable necessity — to the general liberty in the United States. We did not originate, nor are we responsible for, this necessity. Their liberty, if it were possible, could only be established by violating the incontestable powers of the states and subverting the Union; and beneath the ruins of the Union would be buried, sooner or later, the liberty of both races.”

He closed with a beseeching appeal to the abolitionists to desist.

Clay received his reward — or punishment — immediately. No sooner had he finished his speech than Calhoun rose as if to accept his surrender. When he turned his eyes back for the last twelve months, Calhoun said, and compared what he then heard with what was now said in the same quarter, he was forcibly struck, and he might say pleasurably, with the change. He recalled to the memory of the Senate the debate on his resolutions, and Clay's part in it. “Sir,” he added, “this is a great epoch in our political history. Of all the dangers to which we have ever been exposed, this has been the greatest. We may now consider it passed. The resolutions to which I referred, with the following movements, gave the fatal blow, to which the position now assumed by the Senator from Kentucky has given the finishing stroke.” And, as if this had not been enough of humiliation to Clay, he went on: —