osed Calhoun's theories of the right of a State to nullify a
Federal act if unconstitutional, and in March 1858, in the debate
over the Lecompton constitution, he opposed Toombs in a speech which
probably made him the candidate of the Constitutional Unionists two
years later. Another notable speech, of even more far-reaching
importance, he had delivered in 1853 in favor of opening up the West
by building the Pacific Railroad, a position in which he was
supported by Jefferson Davis.

Mr. Bell was for the Union in 1861, denying the right of secession,
but he opposed the coercion of the Southern States, and when the
fighting actually began he sided with Tennessee, and took little or
no part in public affairs thereafter. He died in 1869.

AGAINST EXTREMISTS NORTH AND SOUTH (From a Speech in the Senate,
March 18th, 1858. on the Lecompton Constitution)

The honorable Senator from Georgia, Mr. Toombs, announced some great
truths to-day. He said that mankind made a long step, a great
stride, when they declared that minorities should not rule; and that
a still higher and nobler advance had been made when it was decided
that majorities could only rule through regular and legal forms. He
asserted this general doctrine with reference to the construction he
proposed to give to the Lecompton constitution; and to say that the
people of Kansas, unless they spoke through regular forms, cannot
speak at all. He will allow me to say, however, that the forms
through which a majority speaks must be provided and established by
competent authority, and his doctrine can have no application to the
Lecompton constitution, unless he can first show that the
legislature of Kansas was vested with legal authority to provide for
the formation of a State constitution; for, until that can be shown,
there could be no regular and legal forms through which the majority
could speak. But how does that Senator reconcile his doctrine with
that avowed by the President, as to the futility of attempting, by
constitutional provisions, to fetter the power of the people in
changing their constitution at pleasure? In no States of the Union
so much as in some of the slaveholding States would such a doctrine
as that be so apt to be abused by incendiary demagogues,
disappointed and desperate politicians, in stirring up the people to
assemble voluntarily in convention--disregarding all the
restrictions in their constitution--and strike at the property of
the