h the invocation was in behalf of humanity, the "invincible
Anglo-Saxon race" (so cried Senator Preston in 1836) "could not
listen to the prayer of superstitious Catholicism, goaded on by a
miserable priesthood."

Now that California and New Mexico were United States territory,
how was it to be devoted to slavery to reward the friends of its
acquisition?

As slavery was prohibited under Mexican law, this territory must
by the law of nations remain free until slavery was, by positive
enactment, authorized therein. This ancient and universal law,
however, was soon to be disregarded or denied by the advocates of
the doctrine that the Constitution of the United States spread
itself over territories, and, by force of it, legalized human
slavery therein, and guaranteed to citizens of a State the right
to carry their property--human slaves included--into United States
territory and there hold it, by force of and protected by the
Constitution, in defiance of unfriendly territorial or Congressional
legislation. This novel claim also sprung from the brain of Calhoun,
and was met with the true view of slavery, to wit: That it was a
creature solely of law; that it existed nowhere of natural right;
that whenever a slave was taken from a jurisdiction where slaves
could be held by law, to one where no law made him a slave, his
shackles fell off and he became a free man. The soundness of the
rule that a citizen of a State could carry his personal property
from his State to a Territory was admitted, but it was claimed he
could not hold it there if it were not such as the laws of the
Territory recognized as property. In other words, he might transfer
his property from a State to a Territory, but he could not take
with him the law of his State authorizing him to hold it as property.
The law of the _situs_ is of universal application governing
property.

It remains to briefly note the effort to extend and interpret the
Constitution, with the sole view to establish and perpetuate human
slavery.

Near the close of the session of Congress (1848-49), Mr. Walker of
Wisconsin, at the instigation of Calhoun moved, as a rider on an
appropriation bill, a section providing a temporary government for
such Territories, including a provision to "_extend the Constitution
of the United States to the Territories_." This astounding
proposition was defended by Calhoun, and, with his characteristic
straightforwardness, he avowed the true object