Rehearsing a long list of northern “aggressions"—including the Northwest Ordinance, the Missouri Compromise, state personal liberty laws that blocked recovery of fugitive slaves, and the Wilmot Proviso—the Address reiterated Calhoun’s doctrine of the constitutional right to take slaves into all territories, reminded southerners that their “property, prosperity, equality, liberty, and safety” were at stake, and warned that the South might secede if her rights were not protected.
