But now that the election was over and a new term in the Senate secure, he was ready to conciliate pro-slavery opinion with stronger expressions.

Hence, in a speech at Memphis, he cunningly linked together in argument unfriendly legislation, slavery, and annexation.

He said: "Whenever a Territory has a climate, soil, and production making it the interest of the inhabitants to encourage slave property, they will pass a slave code." Wherever these preclude the possibility of slavery being profitable, they will not permit it.

On the sugar plantations of Louisiana it was not a question between the white man and the negro, but between the negro and the crocodile.

He would say that between the negro and the crocodile, he took the side of the negro; but between the negro and the white man, he would go for the white man.