there is no grievance growing out of a non-fulfillment of constitutional obligations which cannot be remedied under the Constitution and within the Union; and I hold that every constitutional obligation imposed by that instrument must be executed by the Federal Government. If legislation is necessary Congress is the proper tribunal to furnish that legislation, and not conventions of the separate States. The Constitution does not prescribe that as a mode of fulfilling constitutional obligations.

LOUIS T. WIGFALL [Tex.].-The Senator from Illinois pledges himself here before the country, and as a Senator, that if we will make out our list of grievances, and state the specifications, he, by his vote, will remove them. Now, sir, I accept the pledge, and I will state a grievance. It is that the inhabitants of a Territory, gathered from every quarter of the world-from the five points of New York and the purlieus of London-under homestead bills, have squatted upon domain that belongs to these States; that they, in their arrogance and impudence, countenanced by men whose opinions have in other days weighed with the people of the United States and in open violation of the organic law, in open violation of the law of Congress that organized the Territory, have attempted to decide what is property and what is not, and to confiscate it. Now, I ask the Senator from Illinois whether he will vote to repeal their unconstitutional, illegal legislation, and whether he will vote, in order to restore peace to the country, for enforcing the laws and protecting the rights of the people of the South in their property within the Territories? That is one of the grievances under which we are excited, under which we are suffering. It is one of the points that has excited the public mind as much as any other, and the country in which I live infinitely more than the Fugitive Slave Bill, or all other bills upon that question. It is this attempt of the inhabitants of a Territory to assume powers which are denied, in this day and generation, the people of sovereign States.

Now I put it to the Senator from Illinois. I wish no dodging. Our proposition is that slaves are property. We say that they are property by the laws of the States in which we live. We say that they are recognized as property by the Federal Constitution. Three times in that compact are they recognized as property. First, there is a provision that, before the year 1808, the slave trade should not be interrupted. Then it was recognized as a legitimate matter of commerce. The slave trade could not by Congress be interfered with for twenty years. It was the

only branch of trade that could not be interfered with. This was a clear, distinct recognition of the principle that man has the right to own property in man-yes, sir, and to traffic in the souls and bodies of men. That is in the Constitution. Another recognition of slaves as property is in the further provision that when they escape they shall be delivered up on claim of their owners. The third is the provision as to taxation and representation. We say, then, that slaves are property by the law of the land; by our own State constitutions and State laws; that slaves are recognized in the Federal Constitution as property. We say that within our own limits we will protect that species of property. Within the limits of the States where it is not property we ask no protection. We say that in all Federal territory, in this District of Columbia, on board our merchant vessels when three miles from shore, wherever the Federal flag floats, or the Federal laws extend, or the Federal courts have jurisdiction, there we are entitled to protection unless this Government is unlike any other government that ever was instituted by man, and is not pledged to protect the property of citizens that is within and under its jurisdiction. These being our views, we demand that in the District of Columbia, in the forts, in the navy yards, in the dock-yards, on board of our merchant vessels when three miles from land, and in the Territories, that species of property shall be protected by Federal legislation. Will the Senator give us that protection?

SENATOR DOUGLAS.-If the grievance is that we have not passed laws to protect slavery in the Territories, why does not some one of you bring in a bill to protect slavery in the Territories? It will not do for you to say you will destroy the Union for fear we will not do that which no man of you will bring forward a law to do. Nor will it do for you to assume that such a bill would not be passed until you make the effort. It will be time enough for you to assign that as a cause for breaking up the Union when you have made an effort and have failed in getting the law passed.

SENATOR WIGFALL.-What is the use of our discussing on this side of the Chamber what we would be satisfied with, when nothing has been offered us, and when we do not believe that we will be permitted to retain even that which we now have? If Northern Senators, who have denied that, by the Constitution of the United States, slaves are recognized as property; who have urged and advocated those acts which we regard as aggressive on the part of the people-if they will rise here and say in their places that they desire to propose amendments to the Constitu

tion and beg that we will vote for them; that they will, in good faith, go to their respective constituencies and urge the ratification; that they believe, if these Gulf States will suspend their action, that those amendments will be ratified and carried out in good faith; that they will cease preaching this "irrepressible conflict," and if, in those amendments, it is declared that slaves are property, that they shall be delivered up upon demand; and if they will assure us that Abolition societies shall be abolished; that Abolition presses shall be suppressed; that Abolition speeches shall no longer be made; that we shall have peace and quiet; that we shall not be called cut-throats and pirates and murderers; that our women shall not be slandered-these things being said in good faith, the Senators begging that we will stay our hand until an honest effort can be made, I believe that there is a prospect of giving them a fair consideration. [Laughter on the Republican side.]

Senators laugh in my face. I beg that my friend from Kentucky [Mr. Powell] and other Union-savers upon this floor will look and see the derision, the contempt, that is expressed in every Senator's face on the other side when I make these propositions. I trust that they will understand. Fas est ab hoste doceri -learn even from your enemies some wisdom. Waste not your time in idle prattle. You are regarded as poltroons; and they talk of force, of coercion, of holding this glorious blood-bought Union, as they regard it, together with hemp. And yet you petition and beg and ask that this "glorious Union" may be continued, in order that you may be taxed, and that the hard earnings of those men whom you represent shall be taken from their pockets in order to build up Northern wealth and property, to clear out their harbors and construct their roads. This is the manner in which you are treated when you talk about compromise. I say to the Senators on the other side that you will have to abolish your Abolition societies if you expect to live long in our company. I say that within your borders there are presses and there are public speakers, and unless the newspapers have given a false account of the fact your President-elect a few months before his nomination was a hired Abolition lecturer, delivering, at $100 each, lectures throughout the country, exciting the people against us. We say to those States that you shall not that is the phrase I choose to use, and I reflect the feeling and determination of the people I represent when I use it-you shall not permit men to go there and excite your citizens to make John Brown raids or bring fire and strychnine within the limits of the State to which I owe my allegiance. You shall not

publish newspapers and pamphlets to excite our slaves to insurrection. You shall not publish newspapers and pamphlets to excite the non-slaveholders against the slaveholders or the slaveholders against the non-slaveholders. We will have peace; and if you do not offer it to us we will quietly, and as we have the right under the constitutional compact to do, withdraw from the Union and establish a government for ourselves; and if you then persist in your aggressions we will leave it to the ultima ratio regum,' and the sovereign States will settle that question

"Where the battle's wreck lies thickest

And death's brief pang is quickest.

And when you laugh at these impotent threats, as you regard them, I tell you that cotton is king! [Loud applause in the galleries.]

I say that cotton is king, and that he waves his scepter not only over these thirty-three States, but over the island of Great Britain and over continental Europe, and that there is no crowned head upon that island, or upon the Continent, that does not bend the knee in fealty and acknowledge allegiance to that monarch. There are five million people in Great Britain who live upon cotton. You may make a short crop of grain, and it will never affect them; but you may cram their granaries to bursting, you may cram them until the corn actually is lifting the shingles from the roofs of their barns, and exhaust the supply of cotton for one week and all England is starving; and we know what men do when suffering from famine. They do not burst open barns and divide the corn. In their frenzy they burn and destroy. We shall never again make less than five million bales. I know that Senators on the other side suppose that when "this glorious Union' is disrupted it will be in blood, and that our negroes will rise in insurrection. We understand it well enough to make the experiment, and I say to Senators upon that side that next year they will see the negroes working as quietly and as contentedly as if their masters were not leaving that country for a foreign land, as they did a few years ago when they were called upon to visit the Republic of Mexico. We understand that question. Five million bales of cotton, each bale worth fifty dollars at least-fifty-four dollars was the average price of cotton last year-give us an export of $250,000,000 per annum, counting not rice, or tobacco, or any other article of produce. Two hundred and fifty million exports will bring into our own borders-not through Boston and New York and Phila

"The last argument of kings."

delphia, but through our own ports-$250,000,000 of imports; and forty per cent. upon that puts into our treasury $100,000,000. Twenty per cent. gives us $50,000,000. What tariff we shall adopt, as a war tariff, I expect to discuss in a few months, and in another Chamber.

You suppose that numbers constitute the strength of governments in this day. I tell you that it is not blood; it is the military chest; it is the almighty dollar. When you have lost your market; when your operatives are turned out; when your capitalists are broken, will you go to direct taxation? When you cease to have exports, will you have imports? Burn down a factory that yields ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five thousand dollars a year to its owner and he goes to the wall. Dismiss the operatives, stop the motion of his machinery, and he is as thoroughly broken as if his factory were burnt; for the time he is bankrupt. These are matters for your consideration. I know that you do not regard us as in earnest. I would save this Union if I could; but it is my deliberate impression that it cannot now be done. I have been studying the character of the people that you represent for years past. The family of Dives was the most prolific family that ever breathed or lived upon this earth. Those five brothers would not believe either Moses or the prophets; and if one rose from the dead we are told that they would not believe him. They were prolific, and their descendants have settled in the country in which you live. [Laughter.] That is your business, however; not mine. Now, the question is, can the Union be saved?

man;

I desire the Union to be saved. I have always been a Union I am now a Union man-not from any silly notion that it is of divine origin; not from any absurd idea that blood was ever shed for it; not because I suppose it is an inheritance from our fathers, for it is neither one nor the other. This Union is a compact between States, and may, with the same propriety, be regarded as an inheritance as you would regard a treaty between Great Britain and France, or either of those countries and this.

This is the Union; and when the distinguished Senator from New York [Mr. Seward] said that there was an irrepressible conflict I simply came to the conclusion that he did not know what he was talking about. Why, sir, States that are monarchical in their form of government, States that are republican, States that are democratic, States that are aristocratic, States that are slaveholding, States that are non-slaveholding, States that are agricultural, States that are commercial, States that are manu