"He who regards slavery in those States simply under the relation of master and slave, as important as that relation is, viewed merely as a question of property to the slave-holding section of the Union, has a very imperfect conception of the institution, and the impossibility of abolishing it without disasters unexampled in the history of the world. To understand its nature and importance fully, it must be borne in mind that slavery, as it exists in the Southern States, involves _not only the relation of master and slave, but also the social and political relation of the two races_, of nearly equal numbers, from different quarters of the globe, and the most opposite of all others in every particular that distinguishes one race of men from another." The whole report was replete with accusations against the North, and full of warning as to what the South would do should its demands not be complied with. The bill brought in by the committee was more remarkable than the report itself, and wholly inconsistent with its doctrine. The bill provided high penalties for any postmaster who should knowingly receive and put into the mail any publication or picture _touching the subject of slavery_, to go into any State or Territory in which its circulation _was forbidden by state law_. The report concluded: "Should such be your decision, by refusing to pass this bill, I shall say to the people of the South, look to yourselves. "But I must tell the Senate, be your decision what it may, the South will never abandon the principles of this bill. . . . We have a remedy in our own hands." Clay, Webster, Benton, and others ably and effectually combated both the report and the bill, and the latter failed (25 to 19) in the Senate. Besides denying the doctrine of the report, they showed the evil was not in mailing, but in taking from the mails and circulating by their own citizens the supposed objectionable publications. Benton, himself a slaveholder, then and in subsequent years assailed and pronounced the doctrine of this report as the "_birth of disunion_." He has also shown that Calhoun delighted over the agitation of slavery more than he deprecated it; that he profoundly hoped that on the slavery question the South would be united and a Slave-Confederacy formed.(50) In support of this Mr. Benton quotes from a letter of Mr. Calhoun to a gentleman in Alabama (1847) in which he says: