POSTSCRIPT

My apology for adding a _postscript_, to a discussion already perhaps
too protracted, is the fact that the preceding sheets were in the hands
of the printer, and all but the concluding pages had gone through the
press, before the passage of Mr. Calhoun's late resolutions in the
Senate of the United States. A proceeding so extraordinary,--if indeed
henceforward _any_ act of Congress in derogation of freedom and in
deference to slavery, can be deemed extraordinary,--should not be passed
in silence at such a crisis as the present; especially as the passage of
one of the resolutions by a vote of 36 to 9, exhibits a shift of
position on the part of the South, as sudden as it is unaccountable,
being nothing less than the surrender of a fortress which until then,
they had defended with the pertinacity of a blind and almost infuriated
fatuity. Upon the discussions during the pendency of the resolutions,
and upon the vote, by which they were carried, I make no comment, save
only to record my exultation in the fact there exhibited, that great
emergencies are _true touchstones_, and that henceforward, until this
question is settled, whoever holds a seat in Congress will find upon,
and around him, a pressure strong enough to test him--a focal blaze that
will find its way through the carefully adjusted cloak of fair
pretension, and the sevenfold brass of two faced political intrigue, and
_no_-faced _non-committalism_, piercing to the dividing asunder of
joints and marrow. Be it known to every northern man who aspires to a
seat in our national councils, that hereafter congressional action on
this subject will be a MIGHTY REVELATOR--making secret thoughts public
property, and proclaiming on the house-tops what is whispered in the
ear--smiting off masks, and bursting open sepulchres beautiful
outwardly, and up-heaving to the sun their dead men's bones. To such we
say,--_Remember the Missouri Question, and the fate of those who then