proviso here then, and celebrated its obsequies with pomp and revelry. And here it is again to-day, stalking through these halls, clad in complete steel as before. Even if those whom you denounce as factionists in the north would let it rest, you yourselves must evoke it from its grave. The reason is obvious. Say what you will, do what you will, here, the interests of the non-slaveholding states and of the slaveholding states remain just the same; and they will remain just the same, until you shall cease to cherish and defend slavery, or we shall cease to honor and love freedom! You will not cease to cherish slavery. Do you see any signs that we are becoming indifferent to freedom? On the contrary, that old, traditional, hereditary sentiment of the north is more profound and more universal now than it ever was before. The slavery agitation you deprecate so much is an eternal struggle between conservatism and progress, between truth and error, between right and wrong. You may sooner, by act of congress, compel the sea to suppress its upheavings, and the round earth to extinguish its internal fires, than oblige the human mind to cease its inquirings, and the human heart to desist from its throbbings.

Suppose then, for a moment, that this agitation must go on hereafter as heretofore. Then, hereafter as heretofore, there will be need, on both sides, of moderation; and, to secure moderation, there will be need of mediation. Hitherto you have secured moderation by means of compromises, by tendering which, the great mediator, now no more, divided the people of the north. But then those in the north who did not sympathize with you in your complaints of aggression from that quarter, as well as those who did, agreed that if compromises should be effected, they would be chivalrously kept on your part. I cheerfully admit that they have been so kept until But hereafter, when having taken advantage, which in the north will be called fraudulent, of the last of those compromises, to become, as you will be called, the aggressors, by breaking the other, as will be alleged, in violation of plighted faith and honor, while the slavery agitation is rising higher than ever before, and while your ancient friends, and those whom you persist in regarding as your enemies, shall have been driven together by a common and universal sense of your injustice, what new mode of restoring peace and harmony will you then propose? What statesman will there be in the south, then, who can bear the flag of truce? What states

now.

man in the north who can mediate the acceptance of your new proposals? I think it will not be the senator from Illinois.

If, however, I err in all this, let us suppose that you succeed in suppressing political agitation of slavery in national affairs. Nevertheless, agitation of slavery must go on in some form; for all the world around you is engaged in it. It is, then, high time for you to consider where you may expect to meet it next. I much mistake if, in that case, you do not meet it there where we, who once were slaveholding states, as you now are, have met, and, happily for us, succumbed before it—namely, in the legislative halls, in the churches and schools, and at the fireside, within the states themselves. It is an angel of mercy with which, sooner or later, every slaveholding state must wrestle, and by which it must be overcome. Even if, by reason of this measure, it should the sooner come to that point, and although I am sure that you will not overcome freedom, but that freedom will overcome you, yet I do not look even then for disas trous or unhappy results. The institutions of our country are so framed, that the inevitable conflict of opinion on slavery, as on every other subject, cannot be otherwise than peaceful in its course and beneficent in its termination.

Nor shall I "bate one jot of heart or hope" in maintaining a just. equilibrium of the non-slaveholding states, even if this ill-starred measure shall be adopted. The non-slaveholding states are teeming with an increase of freemen-educated, vigorous, enlightened, enter prising freemen-such freemen as neither England, nor Rome, nor even Athens, ever reared. Half a million of freemen from Europe annually augment that increase; and ten years hence half a million, twenty years hence a million of freemen from Asia will augment it still more. You may obstruct and so turn the direction of those peaceful armies away from Nebraska. So long as you shall leave them room on hill or prairie, by river side or in the mountain fastnesses, they will dispose of themselves peacefully and lawfully in the places you shall have left open to them; and there they will erect new states upon free soil, to be forever maintained and defended by free arms and aggrandized by free labor. American slavery, I know, has a large and ever-flowing spring, but it cannot pour forth its blackened tide in volumes like that I have described. If you are wise, these tides of freemen and of slaves will never meet, for they will not voluntarily commingle; but if, nevertheless, through your

own erroneous policy, their repulsive currents must be directed against each other, so that they needs must meet, then it is easy to see in that case which of them will overcome the resistance of the other, and which of them, thus overpowered, will roll back to drown the source which sent it forth.

"Man proposes, and God disposes." You may legislate, and abrogate, and abnegate, as you will, but there is a Superior Power that overrules all your actions and all your refusals to act, and, I fondly hope and trust, overrules them to the advancement of the happiness, greatness and glory of our country-that overrules, I know, not only all your actions and all your refusals to act, but all human events, to the distant but inevitable result of the equal and universal liberty of all inen.

NEBRASKA AND KANSAS.

SECOND SPEECH.1

I RISE with no purpose of further resisting or even delaying the passage of this bill. Let its advocates have only a little patience, and they will soon reach the object for which they have struggled so earnestly and so long. The sun has set for the last time upon the guarantied and certain liberties of all the unsettled and unorganized portions of the American continent that lie within the jurisdiction of the United States. To-morrow's sun will rise in dim eclipse over them.' How long that obstruction shall last, is known only to the Power that directs and controls all human events. For myself, I know only this-that now no human power will prevent its coming on, and that its passing off will be hastened and secured by others. than those now here, and perhaps by only those belonging to future generations.

It would be almost factious to offer further resistance to this measure here. Indeed, successful resistance was never expected to be made in this hall. The senate floor is an old battle-ground, on which

1 On the return of the bill from the house of representatives with amendments, May 25, 1854. See memoir, page 26, present volume.

* An almost total eclipse of the sun actually occurred on that day-the 26th of May, 1854.-ED.

have been fought many contests, and always, at least since 1820, with fortune adverse to the cause of equal and universal freedom. We were only a few here who engaged in that cause in the beginning of this contest. All that we could hope to do-all that we did. hope to do was to organize and to prepare the issue for the house of representatives, to which the country would look for its decision as authoritative, and to awaken the country, that it might be ready for the appeal which would be made, whatever the decision of congress might be. We are no stronger now. Only fourteen at the first, it will be fortunate if, among the ills and accidents which surround us, we shall maintain that number to the end.

We are on the eve of the consummation of a great national transaction—a transaction which will close a cycle in the history of our country—and it is impossible not to desire to pause a moment and survey the scene around us and the prospect before us. However obscure we may individually be, our connection with this great transaction will perpetuate our names for the praise or for the censure of future ages, and perhaps in regions far remote. If, then, we had no other motive for our actions but that of an honest desire for a just fame, we could not be indifferent to that scene and that prospect. But individual interests and ambition sink into insignificance in view of the interests of our country and of mankind. These interests awaken, at least in me, an intense solicitude.

It was said by some in the beginning, and it has been said by others later in this debate, that it was doubtful whether it would be the cause of slavery or the cause of freedom that would gain advantages from the passage of this bill. I do not find it necessary to be censorious, nor even unjust to others, in order that my own course may be approved. I am sure that the honorable senator from Illinois [Mr. DOUGLAS] did not mean that the slave states should gain an advantage over the free states, for he disclaimed it when he introduced the bill. I believe in all candor that the honorable senator from Georgia [Mr. TOOMBS], who comes out at the close of the battle as one of the chiefest leaders of the victorious party, is sincere in declaring his own opinion that the slave states will gain no unjust advantage over the free states, because he disclaims it as a triumph in their behalf. Notwithstanding all this, however, what has occurred here and in the country, during this contest, has compelled a conviction that slavery will gain something, and freedom will endure a VOL. IV.

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severe, though I hope not an irretrievable loss. The slaveholding states are passive, quiet, content and satisfied with the prospective boon, and the free states are excited and alarmed with fearful forebodings and apprehensions. The impatience for the speedy passage of the bill manifested by its friends, betrays a knowledge that this is the condition of public sentiment in the free states. They thought in the beginning that it was necessary to guard the measure by inserting the Clayton amendment, which would exclude unnaturalized foreign inhabitants of the territories from the right of suffrage. And now they seem willing, with almost perfect unanimity, to relinquish that safeguard, rather than to delay the adoption of the principal measure for at most a year, perhaps for only a week or a day. Suppose that the senate should adhere to that condition, which so lately was thought so wise and so important-what then? The bill could only go back to the house of representatives, which must either yield or insist! In the one case or in the other, a decision in favor of the bill would be secured, for even if the house should disagree, the senate would have time to recede. But the majority will hazard nothing, even on a prospect so certain as this. They will recede at once, without a moment's further struggle, from the condition, and thus secure the passage of this bill, now to-night. Why such haste? Even if the question were to go to the country before a final decision here, what would there be wrong in that? There is no man living who will say that the country anticipated, or that he anticipated agitation of this measure in congress, when this congress was elected, or even when it assembled in December last.

Under such circumstances, and in the midst of agitation and excitement and debates, it is only fair to say that certainly the country has not decided in favor of the bill. The refusal, then, to let the question go to the country, is a conclusive proof that the slave states, as represented here, expect from the passage of this bill what the free states insist that they will lose by it, an advantage, a material advantage, and not a mere abstraction. There are men in the slave states, as in the free states, who insist always too pertinaciously upon mere abstractions. But that is not the policy of the slave states to-day. They are in earnest in seeking for and securing an object, and an important one. I believe they are going to have it. I do not know how long the advantage gained will last, nor how great or comprehensive it will be. Every senator who agrees with me in opinion must feel