shoulder to see what my constituents would think. I told my constituents that I would come here a free man, or not at all; and they sent me here on that condition. I told them that if they wanted a slave to represent them, they could get plenty; but I was not one. I told them that I had already passed through more than one difficult, complex, dangerous session of Congress; that I had been obliged, again and again, to do that which is least grateful to my feelings, to stand not merely opposed to my honorable political opponents, but to stand alone among my political friends without the strength and support which a public man receives from being buoyed up breast-high by men of like sentiments, elected on like principles, and who, if there be error, would stand as a shield and bulwark between him and his responsibility. I foresaw then, exactly as it resulted, that the time would come when I would be obliged again to take that stand; and I wanted my people to know it, so that if they chose to have another, one who would go contrary to his judgment, and bend like a willow when the storm came, they might pick him out, and choose the material for their work.

I know that I have to meet-and I shall meet with all equanimity-all the obloquy that is attached to the course that I have felt it to be my duty to pursue; and I know that so far as I am worth pursuing a gentleman in the legislature had difficulties about passing the resolution for fear it should give me too much importance-so far as I am worth pursuing, I do not doubt that I shall be well hounded. I remember that a great many years ago, not this hall, but the old Hall of Representatives, was the scene of a great strug gle, which excited the country at that day as much as the one through which we have just passed excited us in our day; and I remember, sir, that there was an illustrious individual who there found himself bound by his duty to the country to depart from his personal preferences, and, to some extent, from his political friends, and to cast a decisive vote for John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts, for President. And from that day the howl of "bargain and corruption" pursued him—even to his grave! Sir, I have sat at his feet and learned my political principles. I can tread his path of political martyrdom. Before any cry of legislatures or people I will not yield; they may pass over my prostrate body or my ruined reputation; but step aside I will not to avoid either fate.-Hon. Henry Winter Davis, 1860.

THE RIGHT OF FREE DISCUSSION.

SIR, I claim the right of discussing the question of slavery anywhere, on any square foot of American soil over which the stars and stripes float, and to which the privileges and immunities of the Constitution extend. Under the Constitution, which guarantees to me free speech, I claim it, and I demand it.

The gentleman comes from a slave State, in which they are in the habit of speaking of the laboring classes in the northern States as "greasy mechanics," "filthy operatives," "small-fisted farmers," and they jeer at us as worse than the slaves. This insulting language can be, and is, used in the free States without molestation or injury. Yet they say, "If you come here and utter the sentiments which you sincerely believe, we will hang you." If a mechanic from a free State goes there and utters what he thinks-that if they had more white laborers, and fewer black ones, labor in the South would be more respectable-what do you do with him? You denude and scourge him, and, to intensify the indignity, you drive the knotted thong, by the hand of a slave, deep in his quivering flesh; then tar and feather him; and then put him on the cars, still naked, to be sent a long distance, and threaten with violence the man who has the compassion to give him a cup of coffee. And finally, after being jeered at every station along the route, this victim of your cruelty, a free citizen, crawls into a stable and begsstealthily begs-the cast-off clothes of an ostler to hide his nakedness. You drive away young ladies that go to teach school, imprison or exile preachers of the Gospel, and pay your debts by raising the mad-dog cry of abolition against the agents of your creditors.

Mr. Chairman, I say I claim the privilege of going anywhere and everywhere within the limits of this American Republic, as a free citizen, unmolested, and of uttering, in an orderly and legal way, any sentiment that I choose to utter. Are we, for that, in these United States, to be subjected to violence, outrage, tar and feathers, burning, imprisonment and the gallows? Answer that question. I know that gentlemen say self-preservation is the first law of nature; but if you cannot keep slavery and allow free discussion, then I say, in God's name, before free discussion and all the rights of free citizens are to be sacrificed to the Moloch of slavery, that Moloch must be immolated at the shrine of liberty, free speech, free discussion, and all those rights that cluster

around an American citizen. Why, Mr. Chairman, a citizen of Rome, when the scourge was already upraised, and about to fall upon him, if he uttered the cry, "I am a Roman citizen," arrested that scourge. And, sir, is it not a prouder position to be an American, than to be a Roman, citizen? And are we in the nineteenth century, living under this Constitution, with our free institutions are our persons and our rights to be less sacred than they were under the old Roman administration, eighteen centuries ago?

Hon. Owen Lovejoy, 1860.

JOHN BROWN, &c.

MR. CHAIRMAN, this affair of John Brown brings us to the reality of things. This raid confronts us with slavery, and makes us ask, is slaveholding right? and if so, what rights has it? You want me to curse this man. I will not curse him. You want me to pour out execrations upon the head of old Ossawattomie. Though all the slaveholding Balaks in the country fill their houses with silver and proffer it, I will not curse John Brown. I do honestly condemn what he did, from my stand-point, and, with my convictions, I disapprove of his action, that is true; but I believe that his purpose was a good one; that so far as his own motives before God were concerned, they were honest and truthful; and no one can deny that he stands head and shoulders above any other character that appeared on the stage in that tragedy from beginning to end; from the time he entered the armory there to the time when he was strangled by Gov. "Fussation." He was not guilty of murder or treason. did unquestionably violate the statute against aiding slaves to escape; but no blood was shed, except by the panicstricken multitude, till Stevens was fired upon while waving a flag of truce.

He

But as I remarked, sir, this brings us to confront slavery, and ask what right this Caliban has upon earth. I say, no right. My honest conviction-and I do not know why gentlemen need take offence; they need not unless they choose-my honest conviction is, that all these slaveholding laws have the same moral power and force that rules among pirates have for the distribution of their booty; that regulations among robbers have for the division of their spoils. I want to know by what right you can come and make me a slave? I want to know by what right you can say my child

shall be your slave? I want to know by what right you say that the mother shall not have her child, given to her from God through the martyrdom of maternity? Hear that exquisite warble of a mother's love:

"Ere last year's sun had left the sky,
A birdling sought my Indian nest,
And folded, ah! so lovingly,

Its tiny wings upon my breast."

Now, where is the wretch that would dare to go up and take that fluttering and panting bird from the bosom of its mother, and say, "It is mine; I will sell it like a calf; I will sell it like a pig?" What right had that mother to her babe? Was it because she was Fanny Forrester, the gifted authoress; was it because she was the wife of a venerable and venerated missionary? No, it was because she was its MOTHER; and every slave mother has just as good a title to her babe as Fanny Forrester had to hers. No laws can make it right to rob her. I say, in God's name, my child is mine; and yet I have no right to mine that a slave father has not to his child. Not a particle. The same argument that proves my right to my personal liberty, proves the right of every human being to his. The argument that proves my right to my children, gives the same title, the same sacred claim to every father. They, as I, get it from their God, and no human enactment can annul the claim. No, sir, never! Therefore, every slave has a right to his freedom, in spite of your slave laws. Every slave has a right to run away, in spite of your slave laws. I tell you, Mr. Chairman, and I tell you all, that if I were a slave, and had I the power, and were it necessary to achieve my freedom, I would not hesitate to fill up and bridge over the chasm that yawns between the hell of slavery and the heaven of freedom with the carcasses of the slain. Give me freedom. Hands off. Unthrottle that man. Give him his liberty. He is entitled to it from his God. With these views, I do not think, of course, it is any harm to help away a slave. I told you that a year ago. I need not repeat it. A gentleman says I steal them.

Who steals, when a man comes and takes my child from my hearthstone? Who steals, when he comes and takes the babe, flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone? Who steals? I tell you that I have no more hesitation in helping a fugitive slave than I have in snatching a lamb from the jaws of a wolf, or disengaging an infant from the talons of an eagle.

Not a bit. Long enough has the nation crouched and cowered in the presence of this stupendous wrong. Here and now I break the spell, and disenchant the Republic from the incantation of this accursed sorceress. It is simply a question whether it will pay to go down into the den where the wolf is. If you would only go into your lair, and crunch the bones and tear the flesh of your victims we might let you alone; but you will not. You claim the right to go with this flesh in your teeth all over our Territories. We deny it. Hon. Owen Lovejoy, 1860.

SLAVERY AND THE CONSTITUTION.

THE charge of having spoken against the Constitution was thrown in my face here once before; and I denied it. It never had the least foundation in truth. I always defended the Constitution, because it was for liberty. It was ordained by the people of the United States-not by a superannuated old mummy of a judge-and a Jesuit at that-but by the people of the United States, to establish justice, secure the blessings of liberty for themselves and their posterity, and to secure the natural rights of every human being within its exclusive jurisdiction. Therefore I love it.

These men can perceive nothing in the Constitution but slavery. A young man leads a blushing bride to the altar, and takes the marital vow before God and attendant witnesses to love, cherish and protect her. There she stands -the divinest thing that God has fashioned and placed upon earth-radiant in the beauty of youth, her cheek glowing with the color of the rose, which expands and fades away into that of the lily; her eyes sparkling like the stars from the depths of blue, and her tresses falling around her neck like the locks of the morning. Is the mole on that fair, round neck, or the wart on that plump, soft hand, THE WOMAN whom the bridegroom swore to love and cherish? Say, sir, is it? So there is the Constitution-instinct with freedom, radiant with the principles of universal liberty, seizing the inspired utterances of our Magna Charta, and reducing them to practical and organic realization. Now, Sir, I insist that if the clauses that are deemed to refer to the subject of slavery mean all that the wildest enthusiasm claims them to mean, they bear no other relation or proportion to the Constitution which I swear to support than the excrescence on the hand or neck does to the woman whom the bridegroom vowed to