30'.
There was in the judgment of many Southern men a better opportunity to effect an adjustment on this line of partition than upon any other basis that had been suggested.

But the plea carried with it a national guaranty and protection of slavery on the southern side of the line, and its effect would inevitably have been in a few years to divide the Republic from ocean to ocean.

Mr.Taylor of Louisiana wanted the Constitution so amended that the rights of the slave-holder in the Territories could be guarantied, and further amended so that no person, "unless he was of the Caucasian race and of pure and unmixed blood," should ever be allowed to vote for any officer of the National Government.
PROPOSITIONS OF COMPROMISE.
Mr.Charles Francis Adams proposed that the Constitution of the United States be so amended that no subsequent amendment thereto, "having for its object any interference with slavery, shall originate with any State that does not recognize that relation within its own limits, or shall be valid without the assent of every one of the States composing the Union." No Southern man, during the long agitation of the slavery questions extending from 1820 to 1860, had ever submitted so extreme a proposition as that of Mr.Adams.
The most precious muniment of personal liberty never had such deep embedment in the organic law of the Republic as Mr.Adams now proposed for the protection of slavery.

The well-grounded jealousy and fear of the smaller States had originally secured a provision that their right to equal representation in the Senate should never be taken from them even by an amendment of the Constitution.

Mr.
Adams now proposed to give an equal safeguard and protection to the institution of slavery.