Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/95

Rh the state authorities to apply the remedy.” But he could find nothing in the Constitution authorizing a federal law like the one proposed. He recognized the evil caused by incendiary publications. “But,” he exclaimed, “it is too often in the condemnation of a particular evil that we are urged on to measures of dangerous tendency.”

He hoped “never to see the time when the general government should undertake to correct the evil by such remedies.” He declared himself opposed to it “from the first to the last.” There was a tone of deep anxiety in the words of the old republican, whose heart began to be profoundly disquieted by the fear that in protecting slavery the free institutions of the country might suffer great and permanent harm.

Calhoun's bill was defeated in the Senate by a vote of 25 to 19. Of Northern Senators, only Buchanan and the two Senators from New York, Tallmadge and Silas Wright, voted for it. Van Buren, the Vice-President, manifested his approval of it by his casting vote on some preliminary questions. He was the representative “Northern man with Southern principles.” Seven Southern Senators, led by Clay, voted against the bill.

A few days after this vote, George Tucker wrote to Clay that shortly before James Madison's death — Madison died on January 28, 1836 — he had had a conversation with that veteran statesman about “the then agitating question of the efforts of the abolitionists,” and that Madison had