Upon this evidence it would have rested without question that Mr. Monroe's cabinet had been consulted on the constitutionality of the Missouri compromise line, and that all concurred in it, had it not been for the denial of Mr. Calhoun in the debate on the Oregon territorial bill. His denial brought out this evidence; and, notwithstanding its production and conclusiveness, he adhered tenaciously to his disbelief of the whole occurrence and especially the whole of his own imputed share in it. Two circumstances, specious in themselves, favored this denial: _first_, that no such papers as those described by Mr. Adams were to be found in the department of State; _secondly_, that in the original draft of Mr. Monroe's letter it had first been written that the affirmative answers of his cabinet to his two interrogatories were "_unanimous_" which word had been crossed out and "_explicit_" substituted. With some these two circumstances weighed nothing against the testimony of two witnesses, and the current corroborating incidents of tradition. In the lapse of twenty-seven years, and in the changes to which our cabinet officers and the clerks of departments are subjected, it was easy to believe that the papers had been mislaid or lost--far easier than to believe that Mr. Adams could have been mistaken in the entry made in his diary at the time. And as to the substitution of "explicit" for "unanimous," that was known to be necessary in order to avoid the violation of the rule which forbid the disclosure of individual opinions in the cabinet consultations. With others, and especially with the political friends of Mr. Calhoun, they were received as full confirmation of his denial, and left them at liberty to accept his present opinions as those of his whole life, uninvalidated by previous personal discrepancy, and uncounteracted by the weight of a cabinet decision under Mr. Monroe: and accordingly the new-born dogma of _no power in Congress to legislate upon the existence of slavery in the territories_ became an article of political faith, incorporated in the creed, and that for action, of a large political party. What is now brought to light of the proceedings in the Senate in '37-'38 shows this to have been a mistake--that Mr. Calhoun admitted the power in 1820, when he favored the compromise and blamed Mr. Randolph for opposing it; that he admitted it again in 1838, when he submitted his own resolutions, and voted for those of Mr. Clay. It so happened that no one recollected these proceedings of '37-'38 at the time of the Oregon debate of '47-'48. The writer of this View, though possessing a memory credited as tenacious, did not recollect them, nor remember them at all, until found among the materials collected for this history--a circumstance which he attributes to his repugnance to the whole debate, and taking no part in the proceedings except to vote.