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monstrous absurdity that I would not give the act the least consideration if a parallel proposition were now to be offered.

What were the fruits of the annexation of Texas? I allude to that to show how the woof of vice and of crime is interwoven, and how it progresses. Mexico took exception to that act, and she marched her army to Corpus Christi, and under Polk's administration that army was met at Palo Alto and at Resaca de la Palma, by that old son of Mars, Zachary Taylor, and it was overthrown. What did Polk do? He sent a message to Congress declaring that American blood had been shed upon American soil, and asking Congress to repel the invasion. It is a historical and a geographical fact, as demonstrable as such facts can be, that Corpus Christi never had been any part of Texas until it was usurped after the battle of San Jacinto; that when Texas was one of the Mexican states, and one of the Spanish provinces, it had never been any part of Texas. What did Congress do? It recognized the war. I voted against the war, and I denounced the position of the President that American blood had been shed upon American soil as a falsehood; and I think that I conclusively proved it to be so in a speech that I made upon the subject in the House of Representatives.

What then took place? As a continuation of that line of policy, I say, came the war with Mexico. I voted against recognizing that war. I voted against it not only for the reason I have stated, but for another reason. I knew that the result of the war would be the acquisition of more territory; and that whenever we got more territory, this apple of discord, this perpetual, this accursed question of negro slavery would again be thrown in to divide and to distract the people. I then went out of Congress, and now have returned. If I had been present in 1821 I might have voted against the Missouri compromise; it is probable I should have done so; but after it had been passed, and had given peace and quiet to the land for a generation, I was utterly opposed to its disturbance; and if I had been a member of either House of Congress in 1854, I should have voted, and I should have exerted myself to preserve that compromise inviolate. When Kansas was sought to be admitted, and the Lecompton constitution was pressed upon Congress for adoption, I investigated the subject, and I admitted and believed and said publicly and boldly that it was a most outrageous and palpable fraud; and if I had been here in 1858 I should have voted against the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton constitution. Mr. President, I am here as the humblest member of this body;

but I am here not as a factionist, not as a party man. I belong to no party. I am too old; my remaining years on earth are too few for me ever to expect to wear another party collar. I am here to vote, and to do what I deem to be right upon every question, upon every measure, as it comes up in this House, according to the lights of my information and of my reason. I am utterly opposed to this emancipation. Oh! in the name of our country, as gentlemen hope to restore this Union, to crush out this rebellion, to bring the traitors to justice and to condign punishment, let them suspend until that consummation any policy or measures which introduce discord. Until this war closes in triumphant success, in the glorious reconstruction of the Union, in the assertion of the majesty of the Constitution and the laws, let us have unity and peace among all men who want to bring about these results.

I was pained, and inexpressibly pained, the other day, when my new but most respected friend from Iowa (Mr. Harlan) signified his willingness to put arms in the hands of the slaves. When that is done, I would say to my friend that all hope of the reconstruction of this Union is gone-gone forever. Oh! you do not know what horrors such a measure might produce. Recur to your early reading; examine again in our Library the history of the insurrection in San Domingo, with all its blood and atrocities, the reading of which makes human nature shudder. I have seen men refugees from the servile insurrection of San Domingo, and the living, glowing, horrid colors in which they painted those scenes to me, haunt my memory to this day. Read the accounts of the alarm produced in Richmond many, many years ago by the meditated insurrection by the slave Gabriel; trace the limited, but bloody and frightful course of the more recent servile revolt in Southampton. But a few days since, when England seemed to choose this time of our division and civil war to pick a quarrel with us, both the mother country and Canada sent out a rally cry to the fugitive slaves in her provinces to form themselves into companies and regiments to take part in a war against this country, in invading the United States, and, no doubt, particularly the slave States. When they come as invaders, with arms in their hands, and address to their kindred and their race, who are enslaved by us, words of passion and hate and vengeance, and put arms into their hands, it will be like letting the young tiger taste of blood. When he gets the taste, his savage fury will soon know no bounds, and he will glut every infernal passion.

Sir, I am acquainted with the negro race. I have been born in the same family with them. I have grown up with them. I have played with them. They have shared with me my joys and my sorrows. I have shared with them theirs. I own slaves now. Next to my wife and my children, I would defend my slaves, and would guard them from every wrong; and that is the universal sentiment of the slaveholders in my State. I wish you would come among us and see the institution there. My slaves are not for sale. There is no money that would buy my faithful and contented slaves; and they are all so, so far as I know. I have not seen a slave chastised for twenty years; and it is a rare occurrence that you hear of it in my State. They are clothed well, they are fed well, they are housed well, they have every attention of the most skillful physicians that the members of the white family have. Yes, and in the midst of cholera and pestilence and death, their owners stand by them and share the malaria and the infection with them. I have seen it done again and again. If it was not egotism, I would say that I have performed that part myself, without any regard to consequences or the peril of my life, and I would do it forever.

The perpetual agitation of the slave question is what has brought on this rebellion. I admit that slavery has been one of the causes; a remote cause, but a pretty powerful one. The cotton States, by their slave labor, have become wealthy, and many of their planters have princely revenues-from $50,000 to $100,000 a year. This wealth has begot pride and insolence and ambition, and these points of the Southern character have been displayed most insultingly in the halls of Congress. I admit it all. But in these Southern States, and among these planters, are some of the truest gentlemen, in the highest sense of the word, that I have ever known, and some of the purest patriots. I admit, however, that, as a class, the wealthy cotton-growers are insolent; they are proud; they are domineering; they are ambitious. They have monopolized the Government in its honors for forty or fifty years, with few interruptions. When they saw the scepter about to depart from them in the election of Lincoln, sooner than give up office, and the spoils of office, in their mad and wicked ambition they determined to disrupt the old Confederation and to erect a new one, where they would have undisputed power. I am for meeting them in that unholy purpose of theirs. I want them met in battle array. Whenever they send an army in the field, I want that army met and overthrown.

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They had some reason to complain of a few old women and fanatical preachers and madmen in the Northern States, who were always agitating this question; but nine out of ten of the Northern people were sound upon the subject. They were opposed to the extension of slavery, and I do not condemn them for that; but they were willing to accord to the slaveholder and to the slave States all their constitutional rights.

I think that the last Congress made a great mistake in not accepting Mr. Crittenden's compromise. It would have left the cotton States without a pretext by which they could have deluded and misled the masses of the people. The last letter that Old Hickory wrote—and there is a gentleman now in this body who has it in his possession-said that the tariff was only a pretext for the disturbance in the form of nullification in 1832-'33; that they meditated treason and a separate Southern empire or confederation; that they only seized that as the pretext for making their outbreak, and that they would next seize upon the slave question as another pretext. They have done so.

Mr. President, both sides have sinned, North and South, the extreme men. I could live by these gentlemen who surround me as neighbors, holding my slaves, and they opposed to the institution. I would do it in the most perfect security, and they would do it without infringing on any of my rights. I know they would; but it is not so with the extreme men; I am afraid it is not so with the gentleman from Massachusetts, to whom I have been addressing some of my remarks. I would fain hope it was so, and I shall rejoice to find that I am mistaken. But what say some of these extreme Northern men about slavery and about the Constitution? Here is what one says:

"The Constitution is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.”—The Liberator. "No union with slaveholders.”—Ibid.

There is proscription, without condition, inexorable and forever. "No union with slaveholders." It is that fanatical sentiment that has brought many of them to curse and to execrate the memory of Washington, as well as of the Constitution. Here is what another of them has said:

"The anti-slavery party had hoped for and planned disunion because it would lead to the development of mankind and the elevation of the black man."— Wendell Phillips.

Phillips gives his sympathies, as the gentleman from Indiana gives his, to the Southern confederation, and he says "the South

deserved to succeed because she had exhibited better statesmanship and more capacity for control." The Abolitionists subscribe to a memorial to Congress that contains this prayer:

"That amid the varied events which are constantly occurring, and which will more and more occur during the momentous struggle in which we are engaged, such measures may be adopted as will insure emancipation.”

That is the great end and object for which many of these fanatics contend; it is not the re-establishment of the Constitution. I want the Constitution re-established as Washington made it. In attempting to put down this rebellion and to prevent a revolution, I do not want Congress itself to inaugurate and consummate a revolution. No, Mr. President, let Congress do its duty in this war faithfully, fearlessly. The people are doing theirs; they have come up to the rescue of the imperiled capital and Government as no people ever came up before. Yea, from the east to the west, especially in the free States, they are as one man. Kentucky has been invaded. The Confederate government has avowed that it will have Kentucky and Maryland and Missouri. They proclaimed, when they invaded Kentucky, that Kentucky was necessary to the Southern confederation, and they would have it at the cost of blood and of conquest. I am for meeting them, not only with sword, but with sword and shield, and I am for fighting them to extermination until we beat them back, having profaned so outrageously our soil. Our brothers of the northwestern States, and of the extreme northwestern States, have come to our rescue with a generosity and a devotion and a brotherhood that fill us with admiration and gratitude. Never, oh! never were there more welcome visitants to any country. They have seen us; they have seen our institutions; we have seen them; we have become better acquainted with each other, and we have learned to esteem each other more truthfully and correctly. They are beginning to marry our daughters, and we will send our sons to marry their daughters, and let us establish a union of hearts and a union of hands that will last forever.

Why, Mr. President, Kentucky has almost peopled the northwestern States, especially Indiana and Illinois. I have no doubt that one fourth of the people of Indiana are either native-born Kentuckians or the sons and daughters of native-born Kentuckians. They are bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. When you offer to the Union men of Kentucky the choice, whether they will remain united forever with Indiana and Ohio and Illinois, or go with Georgia and South Carolina and Florida, they will answer,

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