Calhoun on the Mexican War: "We are made to dig our own grave"

Merrill Peterson describes John Calhoun's concerns about the Mexican War as of December 1846, when Congress reconvened:

Calhoun returned to Congress determined to bring the war to a rapid close. Making war was inevitably centralizing; the revenue to finance it must upset the finances of the country and, after the struggle to reform the tariff, force it upward again; above all, by raising the specter of new slave territory, the war inflamed abolitionist feelings in the North and turned all parties against the South. "They are willing that our blood and treasure shall be expended freely in the war to acquire territory, not for the common good, but as a means of assailing and ruining us. We are made to dig our own grave," Calhoun wrote gloomily.