He told Webster that, according to the doctrine of his 7th of March speech, to permit Texas to be divided into several States would be harmless, because slavery was excluded from a large part of it by the ordinance of Nature, the will of God. He taunted him for not having discovered his now celebrated principle of the ordinance of Nature and will of God until after Taylor's election, and reminded him that prior to the election Cass and Buchanan, the recognized heads of the Democratic party, had advocated leaving the question to the decision of the settlers in the Territories or, in other words, leaving the ordinance of Nature and will of God to manifest themselves. But Webster had then opposed Cass' election and denounced his doctrines and proposed policies. The Whigs, having run counter to the overwhelming popular sentiment in their unpatriotic opposition to the Mexican War, found themselves ruined. They chose a distinguished soldier of that war President, and hoped to rally by adopting this Democratic doctrine. He accused Seward of carrying New York for the Whigs in the late election by assuring them that Taylor, though a slave-holder, would approve the legislative monstrosity known as the Wilmot proviso, excluding slavery forever from the new Territories. But Taylor had ignored Seward's promise. New York's vote had elected Taylor and a few weeks later Seward was chosen Senator. Taylor was made President and Seward Senator by the latter's successful fraud. Calhoun's charge of Northern aggression and encroachment he met with a sweeping denial. Neither the North nor the South as such had any right in the Territories, but all the people of the States had equal rights there. The Ordinance of 1787, denounced by Calhoun as a Northern aggression on Southern rights, was voted for by every Southern State. That Ordinance did not, in fact, exclude the South, or even slavery, from the Northwest Territory. A majority of the settlers in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois were from the South. Slavery had actually existed in Indiana and Illinois and had but recently disappeared. The Missouri Compromise was not an act of Northern aggression, but was passed by a united South which had made repeated efforts to extend it to the Pacific. The exclusion of slavery from Oregon was not an act of Northern aggression, but the work of the settlers during the period of joint occupancy under the treaty with Great Britain, and should be accepted by the anti-slavery agitators as proof of the wisdom of popular sovereignty. the objection that the people of the South were forbidden to emigrate with their property to the new Territories was simply a complaint that they could not carry the laws of their States with them, but must be governed by the laws of their new domicile. Calhoun's project of maintaining an equilibrium between free and slave States or of compelling States to accept or retain slavery against their will was impossible.