These fervent encomiums were fully warranted by the acts of various Northern mobs, that had maltreated abolitionist speakers, broken up anti-slavery meetings, and committed numerous other deeds of lawless violence. But however flattered the Northerners of that generation may have been, in feeling that they thoroughly deserved Benton's eulogy, it is doubtful if their descendants will take quite the same pride in looking back to it. An amusing incident of the debate was Calhoun's attack upon one of the most subservient allies the South ever had in the Northern States; he caused to be sent up to the desk and read an abolition paper published in New Hampshire, which contained a bitter assault upon Franklin Pierce, then a member of Congress. Nominally he took this course to show that there was much greater strength in the abolition movement, and therefore much greater danger to the South, than the Northern senators were willing to admit; in reality he seems to have acted partly from wanton malice, partly from overbearing contempt for the truckling allies and apologists of slavery in the North, and partly from a desire not to see the discussion die out, but rather, in spite of his continual profession to the contrary, to see it maintained as a standing subject of irritation. He wished to refuse to receive the petitions, on the ground that they touched a subject that ought not even to be discussed; yet he must have known well that he was acting in the very way most fitted to give rise to discussion,--a fact that was pointed out to him by Benton, in a caustic speech. He also took the ground that the question of emancipation affected the states exclusively, and that Congress had no more jurisdiction over the subject in the District of Columbia than she had in the State of North Carolina. This precious contribution to the true interpretation of the Constitution was so farcically and palpably false that it is incredible that he should himself have believed what he was saying. He was still smarting from the nullification controversy; he had seceded from his party, and was sore with disappointed ambition; and it seems very improbable that he was honest in his professions of regret at seeing questions come up which would disturb the Union. On the contrary, much of the opposition he was continually making to supposititious federal and Northern encroachments on the rights of the South must have been merely factious, and it seems likely that, partly from a feeling of revenge and partly with the hope of gratifying his ambition, he was anxious to do all he could to work the South up to the highest pitch of irritation, and keep her there until there was a dissolution of the Union. Benton evidently thought that this was the case; and in reading the constant threats of nullification and secession which run through all Calhoun's speeches, and the innumerable references he makes to the alleged fact that he had come off victorious in his treasonable struggle