His clear, penetrating glance discovered, under the guise of a friendly and pacific purpose, the insidious presence so mischievous to Southern interests, just as George Mason, more than fifty years before, had seen the "poison under the wing of the Federal Constitution." While the bill for the organization of the Territory of New Mexico was pending, the vigilance and sagacity of Mr. Davis elicited the most flattering commendation from his Southern associates. In this bill there was a general grant, in loose and ambiguous phraseology, of legislative power, with a reservation that no law should be passed "in respect to African slavery." Strangely enough, this provision, though obviously involving an inhibition against the enactment of laws for the protection of Southern property, escaped general detection. Mr. Davis promptly exposed its purpose, and offered an amendment, striking out the restraint against legislation "in respect to African slavery," and prohibiting the enactment of any law interfering "with those rights of property growing out of the institution of African slavery as it exists in any of the States of this Union." To meet the concurrence of other Senators, the amendment was variously modified, until, as explained by Mr. Davis, it embodied "the general proposition that the Territorial Legislature should not be prevented from passing the laws necessary for the protection of the rights of property of every kind which might be legally and constitutionally held in that territory." It is needless to say that so just a proposition, affording equal protection to Southern with Northern institutions, was defeated. While there was little in Mr. Clay's plan of pacification to recommend it to Southern support, beyond the merely temporary staving off of a dissolution of the Union and civil war, it embodied propositions utterly incompatible with the security of the South. Mr. Davis especially and persistently combated its provision for the abolition of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, and the concession that slavery did not legally exist in the newly-acquired territory. His position upon the general issues involved can not be more clearly and forcibly stated than in his own language: