e from this vote. On January 4th,
the President sent in his special message relative to California
and New Mexico, announcing his famous "Non-action" policy, which
was simply another name for the "Non-intervention" dogma of Gen.
Cass. A year before he had declared that the new Territories must
not be "surrendered to the pistol and the bowie-knife"; but a new
light now dawned upon him, and he advised Congress to leave the
Territories to themselves till their people should be prepared to
ask admission into the Union as States. He talked glibly about
"geographical parties" and the "operation of natural causes" as
any trained Whig politician, and seemed to have totally forgotten
his repeated pledges not to interfere with the action of Congress
respecting "domestic questions." While the hand of the Executive
was thus at work, extreme men in both Houses led the way in violent
and inflammatory speeches. "When we ask for justice, and to be
let alone," said Mr. Clingman, of North Carolina, "we are met by
the senseless and insane cry of Union, Union! Sir, I am disgusted
with it. When it comes from Northern gentlemen who are attacking
us, it falls on my ear as it would do if a band of robbers had
surrounded a dwelling, and when the inmates attempted to resist,
the assailants should raise the cry of peace, union, harmony!" He
gave out the threat, that unless the slave-holders were allowed to
extend their system over the virgin soil of our Territories, they
would block the wheels of Government, and involve the nation in
the horrors of civil war. He charged that the free States "keep
up and foster in the bosoms Abolition Societies, whose main purpose
is to scatter fire-brands throughout the South, to incite servile
insurrections, and stimulate by licentious pictures our negroes to
invade the persons of our white women." Mr. Brown, of Mississippi,
said he regarded slavery "as a great moral, social and _religious_
blessing,--a blessing to the slave, and a blessing to the master."
He graciously admitted that Northern people thought slavery an
evil; but he added, "Very well, think so; _but keep your thoughts
to yourselves_." Jefferson Davis, then as ever afterward, the
apostle of disunion, declared that "slavery existed in the tents
of the patriarchs, and in the households of His own chosen people";
that "it was established by the decree of Almighty God," and
"sanctioned in the Bible--in both Testaments--from Genesis to
Revel