It does not convince us that we are in error. It is not an appeal to our reason and sense of justice and right. It must, as it seems to me, be intended to intimidate; and, if so, we are bound, as brave and free men, to spurn the indignity. Our attachment to the Union is deep and abiding. We do not permit ourselves to calculate its value, or to talk lightly of its dissolution; but, sir, we do know, that we enjoy no monopoly of its advantages or its honors. Its profits are not to us alone. Then why should the specter of disunion be held up before us? If it ever becomes necessary, which God forbid, to contemplate it, terror will strike no deeper to the northern than to the southern heart. Sir, let us have done with this talk about disunion. This controversy is not to be settled by appeals to the fears of either the North or the South. Reason and justice must decide between us. The right must prevail, and the wrong must give way.

Mr. Chairman, I have spoken with the frankness and earnestness that I believe due to this subject, but with no disposition to impugn the motives or the patriotism of others, with whom it is my misfortune to differ. Believing as I do, that this question is one of the first magnitude, I could not discharge my whole duty and say less. Would that I could have said more. Would that I were able to present to the country this momentous subject in all the length and breadth, and depth of its bearings upon the happiness of the people and the well-being of the Republic. Its settlement determines, for all coming time, the character and institutions of this Government. If the friends of freedom are overcome in this contest, it will be the last struggle ever made against the advancement of the slave power-a power which will then overshadow the country, and bear down all opposition to its will. Holding in its iron grasp by far the larger and better portion of the soil of the Republic, the great resource of the laboring man, it will trample at pleasure upon the rights of the masses, and in the end deprive them of their just influence and control in the Government. A triumph now, secures to slavery other and larger conquests. It will move on like a resistless current until it shall spread over the whole continent to the south. This is as certain as that time and the seasons will roll on. If the events of the last few years will not arouse the free laborers of the North to a sense of their danger, then, indeed, will all the

efforts of their friends upon this floor prove fruitless and unavailing. Give to slavery one half of our recent acquisitions, and it will have added to its dominion, within the last three years, a territory larger than that of the entire free States of this Union. Extend it to the Pacific, and it forthwith takes up its march to the South. The history of Texas will be the history of every Mexican province, until that Republic shall be overrun from her northern boundary to the Isthmus of Panama. Her effeminate and unresisting population will be exterminated or enslaved. Slavery will riot in the extent of its possessions and power; and then will grow up at the south the mightiest obligarchy that the world ever saw.

III

SPEECH ON THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE TRANSMITTING THE CONSTITUTION OF CALIFORNIA

MR. CHAIRMAN: This lengthened debate, in my judgment, has been productive of at least one good result. It has disclosed, beyond all question of denial or equivocation, the policy and purpose of the South. It affords ample justification, if any were needed where the path of duty is so clearly marked out, for firm adherence to that policy, upon which I have stood from the first, and upon which I intend to stand throughout this momentous struggle.1

Of the character of this struggle, if there were ever room for doubt, there can be doubt no longer. It must now be conceded that there is substance in this controversy-that the principle of positive prohibition by Congress against slavery in the territories of the nation, is not an abstraction, having no practical object, and leading to no practical result. Four years of earnest, and often acrimonious debate in the halls of this Capitol-an agitation widespread as the country, reaching all classes, and stirring to their profoundest depths the passions of men, attests the magnitude of the struggle, and the mighty interests dependent upon its issue. Except that protracted and bloody conflict which gave birth to the nation none has arisen, and, in my judgment, none will arise in our subsequent history, involving interests so vast, consequences so momentous for good or evil, as the one now pressing its fearful weight upon us-reaching, as it does, to the remotest posterity, and involving, if not the existence, the character and policy of our Government, so long as we shall have a name and a place among the family of nations. The ultimate decision of the present controversy will settle the great question, of the condition and destiny of the southern half of this Continent. It will

1 Delivered in the House of Representatives, May 3, 1850. Cong. Globe, Thirty-first Congress., 1st session, Appendix, pp. 511, et seq. See conclusion of Chapter XXIII.

also settle another great question: whether this Government shall be administered in the spirit that gave it birth, or whether the sufferings and trials of the Revolution shall have been endured in vain whether our Democratic institutions are to stand, or this Government become an Aristocracy, based upon slave property, and slave representation.

In the aspect of results thus lasting and momentous, has the present struggle been viewed by those interested in the extension and perpetuation of slavery. On their part, the conflict has been maintained in a spirit and temper commensurate with their estimate of the magnitude of the interests involved. In behalf of slavery, this battle has been fought with a desperation kindred to madness. Indissolubly united in the bonds of a supreme and all-controlling selfishness-embarrassed by no dissensions-restrained by no ties of brotherhood, nor by the obligations of a high and holy patriotism, the champions of human bondage stand banded together, pressing on directly to the accomplishment of their object, and threatening, if thwarted in their purpose, the dismemberment of the Union, and the total destruction of the free institutions under which we live. Such, sir, is the spirit and temper of the slave power, as exhibited in this struggle-a power as insolent, as arrogant, as defiant of right, and justice, and law, as the most treasonable conspiracy that ever reared its head against a just and benign government.

Sir, this spirit of threatening and defiance, must be successfully resisted, or we are ourselves the veriest of slaves. What! Shall the line of our conduct be prescribed to us under the pressure of treasonable threats? We have severally sworn to support the Constitution, each man for himself; and for our fidelity in this respect, we must stand individually responsible to God and the country. But we are told that we must understand that Constitution, as it shall be taught us by the advocates of slavery— we must adopt their construction of that instrument, and if we presume to overstep the limits of their interpretation, that the Union shall be dissolved, and our system of government overthrown. Not only this, but the line of our action is prescribed to us, within the acknowledged limits of the Constitution. "New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union," is the explicit language of that instrument. Yet we are given to under

stand, if we presume to exercise this clear and admitted power in the case of California, without making certain concessions to slavery as an equivalent, that measures of a revolutionary character will be brought into requisition to arrest our action-that the ordinary government supplies will be withheld-that the yeas and nays will be called, in defiance of parliamentary law and usage, upon frivolous and dilatory motions until the end of the present Congress.

Sir, where are we? Is this a Chamber in which the representatives of freemen meet, for the discussion and determination of grave and important questions? Or is it a theater upon which slaves are taught their obligations and their duties? It behooves us to examine the ground upon which we stand. We have arrived at a point from which we cannot retreat, without a surrender of our independence as representatives upon this floor. I repeat it, we must go forward. To step back-to cower under these threats-is base dishonor-a virtual surrender of our rights, and the rights of the freemen whose representatives we are. It is no question of feeling or personal pride; but of independent action upon this floor-of the exercise of those acknowledged powers, which belong to us as a part of the Government. Shall the acknowledged powers of this Government be exercised through its constitutional organs? Or is a band of conspirators to arrest its action and set its authority at defiance? This, sir, is the point we have reached. I am for meeting the issue here and now. I will yield nothing to treason. I will know no concessions to the threats of faction. It would be base cowardice-a flagrant dereliction of public duty-a surrender of the constitutional powers of this House into the hands of a factious minority, subversive of all rightful authority, and destructve of the very foundations of our institutions of government.

Who is it, and what is it, that dares thus hurl defiance at the constitutional authority of this Government-that dares threaten a dismemberment of this Union? I answer, an aristocracy of slaveholders, who, not content with that share of influence and political power given them by the Constitution, demand the absolute control of this Government-the right to dictate the sphere and the modes of its action. What could be more despotic, than to make the existence of the Government depend upon the acquies