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Book, page 180 / 313 President had no authority to order a part of the disputed territory in possession of the Mexicans to be occupied by our troops; not only because I believed the allegations upon which Congress sanctioned the war untrue, but from high considerations of policy; because I believed it would lead to many and serious evils to the country and greatly endanger its free institutions." [Sidenote: January 13, 1848.] It was probably not so much the free institutions of the country that the South Carolina Senator was disturbed about as some others. He perhaps felt that the friends of slavery had set in motion a train of events whose result was beyond their ken. Mr. Palfrey, of Massachusetts, a few days later said with as much sagacity as wit that "Mr. Calhoun thought that he could set fire to a barrel of gunpowder and extinguish it when half consumed." In his anxiety that the war should be brought to an end, Calhoun proposed that the United States army should evacuate the Mexican capital, establish a defensive line, and hold it as the only indemnity possible to us. He had no confidence in treaties, and believed that no Mexican government was capable of carrying one into effect. A few days later, in a running debate, Mr. Calhoun made an important statement, which still further strengthened the contention of the Whigs. He said that in making the treaty of annexation he did not assume that the Rio del Norte was the western boundary of Texas; on the contrary, he assumed that the boundary was an unsettled one between Mexico and Texas; and that he had intimated to our _charge d'affaires_ that we were prepared to settle the boundary on the most liberal terms! This was perfectly in accordance with the position held by most Democrats before the Rio Grande boundary was made an article of faith by the President. C. J. Ingersoll, one of the leading men upon that side in Congress, in a speech three years before had said: "The stupendous deserts between the Nueces and the Bravo rivers are the natural boundaries between the Anglo-Saxon and the Mauritanian races"; a statement which, however faulty from the point of view of ethnology and physical geography, shows clearly enough the view then held of the boundary question. The discipline of both parties was more or less relaxed under the influence of the slavery question. It was singular to see Mr. McLane, of Baltimore, rebuking Mr. Clingman, of North Carolina, for mentioning
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