fear it will do you no good. Slavery will not go there. Why
require protection where you will have nothing to protect? . . .
All you appear to desire it is for New Mexico. Nothing else is
left. Yet you will not accept New Mexico at once, because ten
years of experience have proved to you that protection has been of
no use thus far." These are somewhat extraordinary words in 1861
from a man who in 1850 had, as a Conscience Whig, declined to
support Mr. Webster for making in advance the same statements, and
for submitting arguments that were substantially identical.

During the debate, in which Mr. Adams arraigned the Disunionists
of the South with considerable power, he was somewhat embarrassed
by a Southern member who quoted resolutions which Mr. Adams had
introduced in the Massachusetts Legislature in 1844, and which had
been passed by that body, respecting the annexation of Texas. He
had declared therein, just as Josiah Quincy had declared with
reference to the acquisition of Louisiana, "that the power to unite
an independent foreign State with the United States is not among
the powers delegated to the General Government by the Constitution
of the United States." He declared, further, that "the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts, faithful to the compact between the people of
the United States, according to the plain meaning and intent in
which it was understood and acceded to by them, is sincerely anxious
for its preservation; and that it is determined, as it doubts not
other States are, to submit to undelegated powers in no body of
men on earth; and that the project of the annexation of Texas,
unless resisted on the threshold, may tend to drive these States
into a dissolution of the Union." This resolution of Mr. Adams
was unfortunate in every respect for his position in the debate on
that day, since it really included and justified every constitutional
heresy entertained by Mr. Calhoun, and claimed for the State of
Massachusetts every power of secession or dissolution which was
now asserted by the Southern States.

Mr. Webster, in one of his ablest speeches (in reply to Mr. Calhoun
in February, 1833), devoted his great powers to demonstrating that
the Constitution was not "a compact," and that the people of the
States had not "acceded" to it. Mr. Adams had unfortunately used
the two words which, according to Mr. Webster, belonged only to
the lexicon of disloyalty. "If," said Mr. Webster, "in adopting
the Co