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326 ble a disposition of the matter, in order to put an end to the prevailing excitement, adding that any attempt to deny to the Californians the right of self-government, in a matter peculiarly affecting themselves, would inevitably be regarded by them as an invasion of their rights, and, upon the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the great mass of the American people would sustain them.

General Taylor was a slave-holder, and his sympathies had always been with his class. In 1847 he had written a letter to his son-in-law, Jefferson Davis, in which he declared that he would respect the feelings of the Free States, but not permit, if he could prevent, any encroachments upon the rights of the slave-holding states; that he would be willing to have the slavery question freely discussed, but, if any practical attempts were made to deprive the Slave States of their constitutional rights, he was also willing that the South should “act promptly, boldly, and decisively, with arms in their hands if necessary, as the Union in that case will be blown to atoms, or will be no longer worth preserving.” But Taylor was also a thoroughly honest and simple-minded man; and, when the Southern hotspurs now told him that the constitutional rights of the slave-holding states were actually encroached upon by the proposed admission of California as a free state, he demurred. He had not fathomed Calhoun's metaphysics. If he understood that the interest of slavery required a