Speech of Senator S.A. Douglas, on the Invasion of States: And His Reply to Mr. Fessenden

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J. Murphy & Company, 1860 - Slavery - 16 pages
 

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Page 8 - I do not expect the Union to be dissolved, I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in...
Page 14 - It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slaveholding nation, or entirely a free-labor nation.
Page 8 - In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.
Page 4 - The execution of these powers falls within the line of its duties; and its control over the subject is plenary and exclusive. It can determine, without question from any State authority, how the armies shall be raised, whether by voluntary...
Page 8 - ... view to a fair judgment whether they do not lead directly to those consequences, on the part of those deluded persons who think that all they say is meant, in real earnest, and ought to be carried out. The great principle that underlies the...
Page 6 - Then, sir, I hold that it is not only necessary to use the military power when the actual case of invasion shall occur, but to authorize the judicial department of the Government to suppress all conspiracies and combinations in the several States with intent to invade a State, or molest or disturb its government, its p^ace, its citizens, its property, or its institutions. You must punish the conspiracy, the combination with intent to do the act, and then you will suppress it in advance.
Page 14 - I have always noticed that those men who were so far off from the slave States that they did not know anything about them, are most anxious for the fate of the poor slave. Those men who are so far off that they do not know what a negro is, are distressed to death about the condition of the poor negro.
Page 10 - Can any man say to us that although this outrage has been perpetrated at Harper's Ferry, there is no danger of its recurrence? Sir, is not the Republican party still embodied, organized, confident of success and defiant in its pretensions? Does it not now hold and proclaim the same creed that it did before this invasion? It is true that most of its representatives here disavow the acts of John Brown at Harper's Ferry.
Page 15 - ... Maine tried to make the senate believe that I had misrepresented the senator from New York and Mr. Lincoln, of Illinois, in stating that they referred to a conflict between states. He said that all they meant was that it was a conflict between free labor and slave labor in the same state. Now, sir; let me submit to that man's candor whether he will insist on that position. They both say the contest will go on until the states become all free or all slave. Then, when is the contest going to end...

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