* * * It is true
that his political opinions differ very widely from those of the Senator
from Kentucky. It may be true, that he, with many great statesmen, may
believe that the Wilmot proviso is a grievance to be resisted "to the
utmost extremity" by those whose rights it destroys and whose honor it
degrades. It is true that he may believe * * * that the admission of
California will be the passing of the Wilmot proviso, when we here in
Congress give vitality to an act otherwise totally dead, and by our
legislation exclude slaveholders from that whole broad territory on the
Pacific; and, entertaining this opinion, he may have declared that the
contingency will then have occurred which will, in the judgment of most
of the slave-holding States, as expressed by their resolutions, justify
resistance as to an intolerable aggression. If he does entertain and
has expressed such sentiments, he is not to be held up as peculiarly a
disunionist. Allow me to say, in reference to this matter, I regret that
you have brought it about, but it is true that this epithet "disunionist"
is likely soon to have very little terror in it in the South.
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