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SPEECH 
 
 HON. A. G. BROWN, OF MISSISSIPPI, 
 
 THE SLAVERY QUESTION; 
 
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 /\ S / DKLITKRED 
 
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 IN THE SENATE OP THE UNITED STATES, DECEMBER 22, 1856 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 1850. 
 

SPEECH. 
 
 The Senate having under consideration the motion of Mr. Rusk to refer so much of the 
 President's message as relates to foreign affairs to the Committee on Foreign Relations — 
 
 Mr. BROWN said: Mr. President, when the President's message 
 came into the Senate, and was read by the Secretary, the first pro- 
 ceeding that followed was the rising of the senator from New 
 Hampshire [Mr. Hale] to make a violent attack on the President and 
 on the sentiments of his message. He based that attack chiefly on 
 the ground that the President had intimated a purpose in certain 
 quarters to attack slavery in the States. This speech of the senator 
 from New Hampshire was quickly followed by speeches of a similar 
 character from the senator from New York, [Mr. Seward,] and others 
 on that side of the Chamber who sympathize with them. These 
 assaults have fallen here as they will fall elsewere — harmless shafts. 
 They have inflicted no injury on the President, and they will inflict 
 none on the great cause which he so manfully defended. 
 
 While assailing the President in coarse and unseemly phrase, these 
 gentlemen have not failed to cover their own positions. In all they 
 have said, from the hour that the message was read to this, the most 
 casual observer will not have failed to perceive that, on some account, 
 their tactics, have been changed. The bold and defiant air of the 
 conquering hero has given place to the subdued manner of defeated 
 soldiers. Senators now read us long speeches, indignantly denying 
 what I had supposed, up to within the last few days, was an admitted 
 proposition everywhere, to wit: that when the proper time came, 
 slavery was to be assaulted in the States. There seems, however, to 
 have been a falling back from this position ; why, I certainly do not 
 know, but I have a strong suspicion that gentlemen have found them- 
 selves, even at the north, in advance of public sentiment, and it has 
 been found prudent at least to fall back on more tenable ground. 
 
 While we have witnessed this exhibition in the Senate, elsewhere 
 an exhibition not less remarkable has been going on. Politicians 
 who certainly express no open sympathy with these gentlemen, seem 
 to have been advancing from a position whichj they occupied hereto- 
 fore, and taking one in closer proximity to the gentlemen on the other 
 side of the Chamber. My reading of these counter-movements, the 
 falling back of the one party and the advancing of the other, is this : 
 that they mean for the time being to camp in sight of each other, and 
 during the next four years to make forays on joint account against the 
 National Democracy ; and when the Presidential contest of 1860 
 
comes on, they will go into battle under the same leader, and fight 
 under banners so nearly alike that a soldier belonging under one being 
 found fighting under the other, will subject himself to no charge of 
 desertion. 
 
 I was not prepared at first for the indignant denials which we have 
 heard from the other side of the Chamber, that there was a purpose 
 to assail slavery in the States. I was not, because at first I did not 
 understand this change of tactics; P had supposed that gentlemen- 
 were more than half inclined to have it known that such an -attack 
 was in contemplation, and that at the proper time their purposes 
 would be made manifest. I knew very well it had been quite the 
 custom at all times when these purposes were directly charged on 
 gentlemen, for them to throw them aside with a sort of " Oh no — no 
 we don't — no such thing." But the burning indignation which has 
 been lately manifested has struck me with surprise. My surprise was 
 manifested in the beginning of this debate. I ventured to quote from 
 memory certain passages from the speeches of gentlemen, manifesting 
 as I then thought, and still think,, purposes altogether different from 
 those avowed in this debate. I spoke from memory alone ; but since 
 then I have given more critical attention to the recorded speeches of 
 gentlemen, and can now speak with more accuracy, and with greater 
 confidence. I do not mean to say that senators deliberately disavow 
 their real sentiments — that would violate the decorum of this body. 
 But I will say that if they have never contemplated an attack on 
 slavery in the States, they have been singularly unfortunate in the use 
 of language. I intend to-day to call particular attention to certain 
 expressions heretofore used by them in the discussion of this question. 
 
 But before I do so, let me set not only myself right, but let me 
 set those right for whom I speak. I recur very briefly to a speech 
 delivered by myself on the 30th of January, 1850, and shall read two 
 or three short sentences from that speech. The party with whom I 
 acted at that day, like the party with whom I act now, had been 
 accused of a direct and deliberate purpose to bring about such a state 
 of public affairs as must necessarily result in a dissolution of the 
 Union. Denying that charge, speaking for myself, speaking for those 
 who acted with me, speaking, as I then believed, and as I now believe, 
 for the great mass of the southern people, I used this language : 
 
 •■ I repeat, we deprecate disunion. Devoted to the Constitution — reverencing the Union — 
 holding in sacred remembrance the names, the deeds, and the glories of our common and 
 illustrious ancestry — there is no ordinary ill to which we would not bow sooner than dissolve 
 the political association of these States. If there was any point short of absolute ruin to 
 ourselves and desolation to our country, at which these aggressive measures would certainly 
 stop, we would say at once, go to that point and give us peace." 
 
 So I say to-day, sir. Speaking for myself and for those in whose 
 name I am authorized to speak, I declare before the Senate and the 
 world, that this Union has nowhere more devoted friends than they 
 and I. And when I have spoken for those for whom I am authorized 
 by election to speak, I feel that I may safely go further and say that 
 nineteen-twentieths of the whole people of the southern States agree 
 with us. Point out any spot short of absolute ruin to ourselves, and 
 desolation to our section of the country, and give us the guarantee 
 that when you have gone to that point, these aggressive and perplex- 
 
ing measures, legislative and others, shall certainly cease, and we will 
 Bay to you at once, go to that point . But, sir, I went on that occasion, 
 as I do now, a step further ; I said : 
 
 " Does any man desire to know at what time, and for what cause, I would dissolve the 
 Union ? I will tell him. At the first moment after you consummate your first act of aggres- 
 sion upon slave property, I would declare the Union dissolved ; and for this reason : such an 
 act, perpetrated after the warning we have given you, would evince a settled purpose to 
 interpose your authority in the management of our domestic affairs, thus degrading us from 
 our rightful position as equals to a state of dependence and subordination. Do not mistake 
 me ; Id) not say that such an act would, peruse, justify disunion ; I do not say that our 
 exclusion from the Territories would alone justify it ; I do not siy that the destruction of the 
 slave trade in the District of Columbia, nor even its abolition here, nor yet the prohibition 
 of the slave trade among the States, would justify it. It may be that not one, nor two, nor 
 all of these combined, would justify disunion. These are but the initiative steps — they lead 
 you on to the mastery over us, and you shall not take these steps." 
 
 I meant then, Mr. President, to say what I say now, that no man 
 in the south has ever taken the ground that the mere act of our 
 exclusion from the Territories would dissolve the Union, if that could 
 be the end of agitation. No southern man has ever taken the ground, 
 and no one takes it now, that the abolition of slavery in this District 
 might not be submitted to, if that was to be the end. But we have 
 looked, and are looking for the day, and have a right, in consequence 
 of the declarations constantly emanating from high quarters, to an- 
 ticipate the hour when the whole northern free-soil phalanx will be 
 turned loose in one mighty assault upon slavery in the States. I have 
 taught my people, as I would teach them to-day, to prepare for thii 
 assault. Defend the outposts. Yield not an inch of ground. It is 
 better to die defending the door-sill than admit the enemy and then 
 ■ee the hearth-stone bathed in blood. 
 
 On the occasion to which I have referred, I drew a picture of what 
 must be our condition if these schemes of emancipation should ever 
 be carried out. Then, as now, gentlemen denied that there was any 
 intention to interfere with slavery in the States ; then, as now, we had 
 assurances of fraternal feelings on the part of our northern brothers. 
 I replied then as I do now : 
 
 " You tell us, sir, there is no intention of pushing us to extremities like these. I do not 
 doubt the sincerity of gentlemen who make this avowal. If there was fixedness 'in their 
 positions, I would believe them — 1 would trust them. If members of Congress were to the 
 political, what stars are to the planetary system, I would take their solemn, and, I hope, 
 sincere declara ions, and be satisfitd. I should feel secure. But a few days, a brief space, 
 and you will pass away, and your places will be filled by men more hostile than you, as you 
 are more hostile than your predecessors, and the next who come after your successors will 
 be more hostile than they." 
 
 I then thought, as we all know now, that the abolition sentiment 
 at the north was fearfully on the increase ; that, bursting the fetters 
 that bound it to a handful of despised fanatics, it was invading all 
 ranks of society, and taking captive thousands and hundreds of thou- 
 sands who a few years ago spurned it as a viper and shunned it as 
 they would a pestilence. What have we not seen and heard? Within 
 the last few days we have heard sentiments avowed on this floor which, 
 a few years ago, would have found no sponsor anywhere outside of an 
 abolition convention. Now they are responded to by a large minority 
 here, and by a much larger minority, if not indeed a majority, in the 
 other house of Congress. We cannot close our eyes to the light that 
 is before us. We have seen this party rise from a little, despised band, 
 
6 
 
 and grow stronger and stronger, until it marches in triumph through 
 twelve northern States, and is defeated in the remaining four by a vote 
 so close as to make our victory over it almost a defeat. Was I not 
 right, then, in refusing to take the promises of these men? Where 
 are the men of that day? G-one, sir, gone. Go to the other house, 
 and you will find their places filled by the men whose coming I pre- 
 dicted five years ago. 
 
 Mr. President, it is not my purpose to charge senators with false- 
 hood, and certainly I shall not assume the privilege of counselling 
 those opposed to me ; but there can be no harm in my saying to the 
 free-soil portion of the Senate, your supporters at home do not believe 
 you are sincere in declaring your opposition to any interference with 
 slavery in the States. They know that, without such interference, 
 there will never be one bondman less ; and whenever you convince 
 them that you are sincere, they will turn you out, and send others 
 here more hostile to slavery than you, as you are more hostile than 
 those who went before you. And, to tell the truth, I think they will 
 serve you right in turning you out. If you did not mean to attack 
 slavery in the States, you ought not to have taught others to believe 
 you did ; and this you did, as I shall now proceed to show. 
 
 I take the first in age among you, as he is certainly first in talent 
 and position, the senator from New York, [Mr. Seward.] When the 
 other day I had occasion to quote by memory from a very remarkable 
 speech of that senator, he did not deny the accuracy of my quotation, 
 but, as senators will recollect, he referred me to Redfield's edition of 
 his speeches, and avowed his willingness to abide by anything found 
 in those volumes. I called at the library, and failed to obtain the 
 books. Communicating that fact to the senator, I do him the justice 
 in this public manner to say that he was so kind as to present me with 
 a copy of his speeches, a volume of which I now hold in my hand. 
 Unlike my friend from Tennessee, [Mr. Jones,] I mean to take these 
 volumes home. I mean to show my constituents, from an authorized 
 edition of the senator's speeches, how much of venom against them 
 and their institutions he has managed to compress within the narrow 
 limits of a little volume like this, and if the Senate will indulge me, 
 I will give a specimen now, not only for the edification of the Senate, 
 but for the information of all independent outsiders. In a speech de- 
 livered by the senator from New York, at Cleveland, in 1848, he used 
 this language, (I read from the third volume of Redfield's edition of 
 the speeches of William H. Seward:) 
 
 " ' What, then!' you say, ' can nothing be done for freedom, because the public consience 
 is inert? Yes, much can be done — everything can be done. Slavery can be limited to its 
 present bounds ; it can be ameliorated ; it can be, and must be, abolished ; and you and I can 
 and must do it. The task is as simple and easy as its consummation will be beneficent 
 and its rewards glorious."' 
 
 Sir, I asked the senator the other day, speaking from memory, as 
 I ask him now, speaking from an authorized edition of his speeches, 
 what did he mean by that language? When addressing himself to a 
 northern audience, he said " slavery can and must be abolished, and 
 you and I can and must do it!" What did he mean, if he did not 
 contemplate an attack upon slavery in the States? Was it to be done 
 by the concurrence of the southern States, as the senator would now 
 
persuade us lie means to have it clone if it shall he done at all? If 
 so, why did not the senator so declare at the time? Why, addressing 
 an audience hostile to slavery, and whom he was persuading to hecome 
 still more hostile, did he say "slavery can and must be abolished, and 
 you and I can and must do it?" Did the senator anticipate the con- 
 currence of the south? Then, why no allusion to the south? Did he 
 anticipate that the suuth was to do the work unaided by the north? 
 Then why appeal to the north? But I go on with his speech : 
 
 " Wherein do the strength and security of slavery lie ? You answer that they lie in the 
 Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution and laws of all slaveholding States. 
 Not at all. They lie in the erroneous sentiment of the Americau people. Constitutions 
 and laws can no more rise above the virtue of the peofle than the limpid stream can 
 climb above its native spring. Inculcate, then, the love of freedom and the equal rights of 
 man under the paternal roof ; see to it that they are taught in the schools and in the churches ; 
 reform vour own code ; extend a cordial welcome to the fugitive who lays his weary 
 limbs at your door, and defend him as you would your paternal gods; correct your own 
 error, that slavery has any constitutional guarantee which may not be released, and ought 
 not to be relinquished." 
 
 Here we have it, sir. The senator from New York meditates no 
 attack on slavery in the States. Oh, no — not he ! He only desires 
 the northern people to understand how much they are at liberty to 
 hate slavery. Their indignation need not be restrained by any vulgar 
 fancy that slavery is protected by the Constitution or the laws, either 
 State or national. Their virtue can rise above the Constitution and 
 the laws. The way is pointed out: inculcate the love of freedom — 
 that is, hostility to slavery — under the paternal roof. Yes, teach 
 your children to lisp with their earliest breath anathemas against the 
 south. Teach it in the schools. Let the schoolmaster understand 
 that he has a higher duty to perform than merely to educate his 
 pupils. He may teach them to read and write, instruct them in 
 geography, and point them to the great moral laws that govern the 
 universe, and yet there is a higher duty for him to perform ; he must 
 teach them to hate slavery, so that when they are grown up men and 
 women, the Constitution and laws shall not rise above their virtue. 
 The servant of God, as he ascends the sacred desk, is told by the sen- 
 ator from New York to preach, not Christ and Him crucified, but 
 freedom — freedom to all mankind, and freedom especially to the poor 
 down-trodden slave. And yet the senator has no purpose now, or at 
 any time to come, to attack slavery in the States. Then why this 
 teaching? Why teach children under the paternal roof to hate 
 slavery ? Why teach it in the schools and in the churches ? Why 
 reverse the Scriptural admonition to love your neighbors as yourselves, 
 and thus teach all mankind to hate the south and despise its people ? 
 If there is no purpose to interfere with the south, its people, or its 
 institutions, to what end does the senator direct all this advice? 
 
 Mr. President, the senator gives us the key to his motive. He says, 
 on page 302 of the .volume in my hand, "Whenever" — yes, sir, mark 
 it well — "whenever the public mind shall will the abolition of slavery, 
 the way will open for it/' There it is, sir — whenever the public mind 
 shall will the abolition of slavery; and then he says, in plain Saxon: 
 "Prepare the public mind under the paternal roof — prepare it in the 
 schools and in the churches — when it is ready the way will open for 
 it." But the senator has no purpose to interfere with slavery in the 
 
8 
 
 States — good, easy man! — he only wants to prove that the Constitu- 
 tion and laws cannot rise above the virtue of the people. Mr. Presi- 
 dent, I give the senator credit for all the talents he possesses, but he 
 has no right to assume that all the rest of mankind are fools. 
 
 "Say to slavery," says the senator, "when it shows its bond and 
 demands the pound of flesh, that if it draws one drop of blood its life 
 shall pay the forfeit." What does that mean? What is the bond 
 here alluded to but the federal Constitution? When the master 
 comes with that Constitution in one hand, and the laws enacted in 
 pursuance of it in the other, and demands the return of his fugitive 
 slave, who perchance has taken shelter under the very roof of the 
 senator from New York, that senator says, like Shylock's judge, "Yes, 
 I award you the return of the slave; but I impose conditions — such 
 conditions as must forever render my judgment inoperative and void. 
 You have a right, under the Constitution, to your slave ; the law 
 doth give it, and I award it; take your pound of flesh, but spill not 
 one drop of blood ; take your slave, but be cautious that you touch not 
 even the hem of the garments of freedom ; for if you do, your life shall 
 pay the forfeit." Such, sir, are the teachings of the senator; such 
 his ethics ; such that moral law of the people over which the Consti- 
 tution can no more climb than the stream can rise above its native 
 spring ! 
 
 But again: "Extend a cordial welcome to the fugitive who lays 
 his weary limbs at your door, and defend him as you would your 
 paternal gods." True, the Constitution declares that fugitives shall 
 be delivered up; but I tell you, says the senator, that "slavery has 
 no constitutional guarantee that may not be released." Disobey the 
 Constitution ; give a cordial welcome to the fugitive ; defend him as 
 you would your paternal gods; strike down the master, and set the 
 bondman free. The Constitution may sanction slavery — the Bible 
 may tolerate it — God may have ordained it; but what of all that? 
 We must have a higher law. 
 
 If it shall be shown that the Constitution sanctions slavery, we will 
 demand an anti -slavery Constitution; if the Bible tolerates slavery, 
 we will demand an anti-slavery Bible ; let it be proven that God or- 
 dains slavery, and we will shriek for an anti-slavery God. Thus is 
 the Constitution denounced, the Bible derided, and God insulted on 
 his throne by men who impiously endeavor to prove what the Consti- 
 tution, the Bible, and God himself deny — that a negro is the white 
 man's equal. But there is no intention to interfere with slavery in 
 the States. We mean to abolish it; we mean to teach abolition in 
 the schools and in the churches, and under the paternal roof; we 
 must defend runaway negroes as we would our paternal gods ; we 
 must correct our error that the Constitution gives any protection to 
 slavery which we may not release; and above all, we must teach the 
 people that their virtue is not to be overcome by the Constitution; 
 only let their minds be prepared for abolition, and the way will open. 
 But we must not interfere with slavery in the States. Will the sen- 
 ator tell us what slavery it is he means to abolish, if it is not slavery 
 in the States? Does he know of any slaverv anywhere else but in the 
 States ? 
 
9 
 
 We have had intimations that the enemies of domestic slavery ex- 
 pect their final triumph through the action of the southern States — 
 that by a sort of "moral suasion" the ownew of slaves will be in- 
 duced finally to give them up. On this precise point I shall have 
 something to say presently. Before I proceed to that point, however, 
 let me make a passing allusion to the higher law doctrine of the sena- 
 tor from New York. From the first volume of Red field's authorized 
 edition of the senator's speeches I read the following : 
 
 '* We hold no arbitrary authority over anything, whether acquired lawfully or seized by 
 usurpation. The Constitution regulates our stewardship ; the Constitution devotes the do- 
 main to union, to justice, to de ence, to welfare, and to liberty. But there is a higher 
 law than the Cowstitution which regulates our authority over the domain." 
 
 A higher law ! The senator, by universal admission, has the 
 honor, if it be an honor, of having first taught in the political schools 
 of our country this doctrine of a higher law. I want to show how 
 apt some of his scholars are. Some of the pupils of the distinguished 
 senator from New York assembled in convention in the State of Ohio 
 for the purpose of nominating a candidate for governor, and resolved 
 as follows : 
 
 "Resolved, That we cannot respect, nor can we confide in, those ' lower law' doctors of 
 divinity who hold human laws above the laws of God ; nor can we concur in their teachings, 
 that the Divine law is subject to congressional compromise. 
 
 " Resolved, That we hereby give it to be distinctly understood by this nation and the world 
 that, as abolitionists, considering that the strength of our cause lies in its righteousness, and 
 our hopes for it in our conformity to the laws of God, and our support for the rights of man, 
 we owe to the Sovereign Ruler of the Uniwrse, as a proof of our allegiance to Him in all our 
 civil relations and offices, whether as friends, citizens, or as public functionaries, sworn to 
 rapport the Constitution of the United States, to regard and treat the third clause of the instru- 
 ment, whenever applied in the case op a fugitive slave, as utterly null and void, and 
 consequently as forming no part of the Constitution of the United States, whenever wa are 
 oalled upon or sworn to support it." 
 
 There is the result of the senator's teachings. He uses the influ- 
 ence of his great name and his high position to declare, before the 
 Senate and to the world, that there is a law higher than the Consti- 
 tution. His pupils, taking up the doctrine, declare that, when they 
 are sworn to support the Constitution, they are at liberty to treat as 
 null and void that clause which requires the return of a fugitive slave. 
 Whether the pupils understand precisely as the instructor intended 
 to teach, it is not my business to determine. That is a duty which 
 devolves on the senator himself. It is sufficient for me to know that 
 he has taught them to believe there is a law higher than the Consti- 
 tution, and that they, following his teachings, repudiate the Consti- 
 tution, and spurn the obligations of the oath that binds them to 
 support it. One set of his admiring friends march right home to 
 victory by planting their feet on the neck of the Constitution, and 
 another part cry out for an anti-slavery Constitution, anti-slavery 
 Bible, and anti-slavery God. 
 
 But, sir, I have other speeches not contained in an authorized edi- 
 tion of the senator's works, but I suppose from the title page not lesa 
 entitled to credit. I read from a pamphlet, entitled "The Dangers 
 of Extending Slavery, and the Contest and the Crisis ; two speeches 
 of William H. Seward, published by the Republican Association: the 
 tenth English edition; Buell & Blanchard, printers, Washington, 
 
10 
 
 D. C." The speeches must have been published in very small edi- 
 tions, or have received great favor in certain quarters. Now, I beg 
 to call attention to a few passages from the speech delivered at Al- 
 bany, October 12, 1855. 
 
 I do so for several reasons, and, among them, for this reason : I 
 want to show how little was thought of the idea of moral suasion, of 
 abolishing slavery through the consent of the masters, when this 
 speech was made. This idea of moral suasion — of bringing up the 
 owners of slaves to the great work of emancipation — was not thought 
 of when this speech was delivered. The senator is too well acquainted 
 with the springs of human action to suppose that he could ever induce 
 slaveholders to adopt his ideas by language such as I shall now read: 
 
 " All agree that in every case, and throughout all hazards, aristocracy must be abhorred 
 and avoided, and republican institutions must be defended and preserved. 
 
 " Think it not strange or extravagant when I say that an aristocracy has already arisen 
 here, and that it is already undermining the republic. An aristocracy could notarise in any 
 country where there was no privileged class, and no special foundation on which such a class 
 could permanently stand On the contrary, every State, however republican its constitution 
 may be, is sure to become an aristocracy, sooner or later, if it has a privileged class standing 
 firmly on an enduring special foundation ; and if that class is continually growing stronger 
 and stronger, and the unprivileged classes are continually growing weaker and weaker. 
 
 " A privileged class has existed in this country from an early period of its settlement. 
 Slaveholders constitute that class. They have special foundation on which to stand— namely, 
 personal dominion over slaves." 
 
 Was it by language such as this that the senator hoped to bring 
 the slaveholders to the point of joining in his great scheme of eman- 
 cipation ? Was there ever an attack more insidious, or one better 
 calculated to bring the slaveholder into discredit? A little further 
 on the senator exclaims : " Oh, how blessed a thing it is for brethren 
 to dwell together in unity !" He comes to bury Caesar, not to praise 
 him. While he speaks of his brethren of the south, he teaches others 
 to regard them as enemies. He says they are the enemies of liberty, 
 already engaged in undermining the republic. 
 
 The senators' s audience, on the occasion referred to, were told plainly 
 that the slaveholders of the south constituted a privileged class— an 
 aristocracy— and that an aristocracy was dangerous to the existence 
 of the republic. Why did he thus teach, unless he meant to bring 
 this privileged class into reproach ? If there be in the south a privileged 
 class— an aristocracy, in the language of the senator— and that aris- 
 tocracy is dangerous to the existence of the republic, does the senator 
 propose no remedy? Does he mean simply to complain of the existence 
 of the evil, without attempting, in any capacity whatever, to remedy 
 that evil ? He goes on : 
 
 " The spirit of the revolutionary age was adverse to that privileged class. America and 
 Europe were firmly engaged then in prosecuting what was expected to be a speedy, complete, 
 and universal abolition of African slavery. 
 
 Here, again, the universal abolition of African slavery is spoken of 
 as an act°necessary to place the government in harmony with the 
 spirit of the revolutionary age. Still there was no design to interfere 
 with slavery in the States. The great scheme of universal abolition 
 was to be carried out through the influence of moral suasion, and 
 that influence was to be effectually exerted by calling the slaveholders 
 
11 
 
 a privileged class, an aristocracy whose special privileges were danger- 
 ous to the republic, and the liberties of the people. 
 
 " O shame ! where is thy blush?" 
 
 See how the senator lays down one proposition after another, dove- 
 tailing each into its predecessor in a manner to draw the public mind 
 to a particular conclusion, that conclusion being that by all the memo- 
 ries of their revolutionary sires, by all their hopes of preserving re- 
 publicanism in this country, they are called upon to wage a ceaseless, 
 unrelenting, and never-dying warfare on slavery wherever it exists ; 
 and yet the senator comes here to-day and says : "No ; I indignantly 
 repudiate the idea that either I or my friends ever dreamed of assailing 
 slavery in the States." After going on through a long argument, 
 which I have no time to read, nor the Senate patience to hear, the 
 senator says, I read again from the Albany speech : 
 
 "I will only ask, in concluding this humiliating rehearsal, whether there is not in this 
 favored country a privileged class ; whether it does not stand on an enduring foundation ; 
 whether it is not growing stronger and stronger, while the unprivileged class grows weaker 
 and weaker ; whether its further growth and extent would not be, not merely detrimental, 
 but dangerous ; and whether there is any hope to arrest that growth and extension hereafter, 
 if the attempt shall not be made now ? 
 
 " The change that has become at last so necessary is as easy to be made as it is necessary. 
 The ivhole number of slaveholders is only three hundred and fifty thousand — one hundredth part 
 of the entire population of the country. If you add their parents, children, immediate rela- 
 tives, and dependents, they are two millions — one fifteenth part of the American people." 
 
 What, sir, is the object — the purpose of the senator in making these 
 declarations? Why does he proclaim that this privileged class in the 
 south is dangerous to republican institutions — that it exists there in 
 violation of the great principle for which the revolutionary battles 
 were fought, and that those who uphold it are only three hundred 
 and fifty thousand ? For what purpose, let me ask you, did the 
 senator from New York present the case in this form to the mind of 
 his audience at Albany ? That senator never speaks without a pur- 
 pose. He does not explain ; and it he will not, I needs must be left 
 to the resources of my own mind for an answer. 
 
 The senator knew that no chord in the heart of our people was so 
 easily touched, or responded so promptly, as that one which binds it 
 to the memories of the Kevolution, and he rightly concluded that our 
 people everywhere, north and south, were deeply imbued with repub- 
 lican sentiments. If, then, he could persuade them that there was a 
 little handful of three hundred and fifty thousand slaveholders at the 
 south warring against the great principles established in our Kevolu- 
 tion, and breaking down republican institutions in the country, why, 
 then, the twenty-five millions who do not belong to this privileged 
 class — to this aristocracy — would rise up, and will the abolition of 
 slavery; and then, in his own language, there being "a will, the 
 way would open for it." 
 
 It is not my business to explore the recesses of any man's heart; but 
 I apprehend the object of the senator in making the speech to which I 
 have alluded, was to persuade the mighty north that it ought to ivill 
 the abolition of slavery. He told them of its dangerous tendencies. 
 He pointed to the feeble prop by which it is sustained. It is upheld, 
 said he, by only three hundred and fifty thousand slaveholders ; and 
 you who are not slaveholders are more than twenty-five millions of 
 
12 
 
 people ; only have the will to overthrow this great monstrosity, and 
 the way will immediately open to you ! Such, if not the language, is 
 at least the teaching of the senator from New York ; and yet he comes 
 to the Senate to-day to tell us he never contemplated, never coun- 
 selled, and never heiieved anybody else contemplated, or counselled, 
 an attack on slavery in the States! 
 
 But, Mr. President, there is a deeper meaning — a larger significance 
 to this speech of the senator. There are three hundred and fifty 
 thousand slaveholding aristocrats in the south, says the senator — men 
 at war with liberty, and dangerous to the republic. They are only 
 one in one hundred of the entire population ; or if you add, he says, 
 " the children, relatives, and dependents, they are one in fifteen ;" 
 consequently fourteen parts out of every fifteen of the entire popula- 
 tion have no interest in slavery. They are, as he seems to_ conclude, 
 mere hewers of wood and drawers of water to the slaveholding aristo- 
 crats. 
 
 These suggestions come from no friendly spirit, Mr. President. 
 The* open a wide field for speculation ; and if I did not feel there was- 
 a necessity for my being brief, I would ask the senator to join me in a 
 ramble through that field. To him it is not a field of treasures, as he 
 supposes. If he expects, by appeals like these, to turn the hearts of 
 the non-slaveholders of the south against slavery, he will miss his aim. 
 They may have no pecuniary interest in slavery, but they have asocial 
 interest at stake that is worth more to them than all the wealth of all 
 the Indies. Suppose the senator shall succeed in his ideas of universal 
 abolition — what is to be the social condition of the races in the south ? 
 Can they live together in peace? No one pretends to think they can. 
 Will the white man be allowed to maintain his superiority there? 
 Let us examine this proposition. There are in my State about three 
 hundred and fifty thousand whites, and about an equal number of 
 blacks. Suppose the negroes were all set free. What would be the 
 immediate and necessary consequence ? A struggle for the supremacy 
 would instantly ensue. White immigration to the State would cease 
 of course. The whites already there would have but little motive to 
 struggle in the maintenance of the unequal contest between the blacks 
 and their millions of sympathizing friends in the free States. The 
 consequence would be that the men of fortune would gather up their 
 transferable property, and seek a home in some other country. The 
 poor men — those of little means — the very men on whom the senator 
 relies to aid him in carrying out his great scheme of emancipation, 
 would alone be compelled to remain : their poverty, and not their will, 
 would compel them to remain. In the course of a few years, with no 
 one going to the State, and thousands on thousands leaving it in one 
 constant stream, the present equilibrium between the races would be 
 lost. In a few years, the disparity would probably be some three, 
 four, or five to one in favor of the blacks. In this state of things, it 
 is not difficult to see what would be the white man's condition. ^ If he 
 should be allowed to maintain his equality he might think himself 
 fortunate ; superiority would be a thing not to be dreamed of. The 
 negroes being vastly in the majority, would probably claim the ascen- 
 dency in the social, and in all other circles. If the white man, reduced 
 
13 
 
 to such a condition, were allowed to marry his sons to negro wives, or 
 his daughters to negro husbands, he might bless his stars. If the 
 senator from New York expects the aid of non-slaveholders in the 
 south in bringing about this state of social relations, let me tell him 
 he is greatly mistaken. If I had to take my choice to-day between an 
 army of large slaveholders and an army of non-slaveholders to defend 
 the institutions of the south, I would take the latter. The first would 
 fight to defend their property, the last to maintain their social supe- 
 riority ; the one would see an outlet after defeat, the other would see 
 themselves degraded below the level of the negroes, their sons married 
 to negro wives, and their daughters consigned to the embraces of negro 
 husbands. I tell the senator that his philosophy has failed — his fine- 
 spun theories will all explode, when submitted to the test of the plain, 
 common sense of the non-slaveholding population of the southern States. 
 The senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Wilson] was equally particu- 
 lar with the senator from New York, to assure us that he contem- 
 plated no attack on slavery in the States. Indeed he became some- 
 what indignant at the idea that any one should intimate that he had 
 ever contemplated any such thing. I have no authorized edition of 
 the senator's speeches ; and if I read him incorrectly, he is present, I 
 am glad to see, and will no doubt correct me. The senator knows 
 what the anti-slavery party mean to do — I mean the Garrison and 
 Wendell Phillips party. Did the senator from Massachusetts use 
 this language: 
 
 " The anti-slavery party alone is too weak They are few in numbers, though their 
 policy, I believe, will yet be impressed upon the country, but the time is not yet." 
 
 The senator, I repeat, knows who the anti-slavery party are, and 
 he knows their purposes. Did he use that language ? If he did, the 
 inference is irresistible that he believed in the soundness of the anti- 
 slavery theories, and was ready to embrace them at the right time. If 
 he did not so believe, and was not so ready, why did he declare, "but 
 the time is not yet?" 
 
 Mr. WILSON. Will the senator allow me to make an explana- 
 tion? 
 
 Mr. BROWN. Certainly. 
 
 Mr. WILSON. I beg leave to assure the senator from Mississippi 
 that the object of my making that statement was not to refer to the 
 Garrison abolitionists as the anti- slavery men, or the radical or Ger- 
 rit Smith abolitionists ; but to speak of the anti-slavery men of the 
 country whose sentiments were embodied in the Buffalo platform of 
 1848, and the Pittsburg platform of 1852. The doctrines of the free- 
 soil party were the doctrines to which I referred. I said that those 
 who agreed in those platforms were in a small minority. I believed 
 the sentiments embodied in those platforms were correct, and would 
 yet be impressed on the country. Nothing in those platforms con- 
 templates any action by the Congress of the United States, or any 
 interference whatever with slavery in the slaveholding States in the 
 Union. I never entertained the thought that we had that power, and 
 I never proposed to usurp or exercise it. 
 
 Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, the senator admits that he used the 
 language, but avoids its force by saying, in effect, that it was ad- 
 
14 
 
 dressed to parties other than those I have named. The language was 
 addressed to some one who was in advance of the senator ; and whether 
 it was Garrison or Gerrit Smith, or some one of less ultra views, makes 
 but little difference. It is the language of entreaty, addressed to some 
 one imploring him notfto go so fast. He says your sentiments are all 
 right, hut the time has not come for impressing them on the country. 
 I submit to the Senate how far any party must have gone when the 
 senator from Massachusetts had to call on them to stop ; and I submit 
 to the senator himself, whether he did not contemplate an advance 
 movement when he said, "The time is not yet." 
 
 The senator will pardon me if I say these are significant declara- 
 tions ; and when coupled with remarks such as those I have quoted 
 from the speeches of his friend from New York, they become too po- 
 tential to be passed by in silence. 
 
 JVlr. SEWARD. Mr. President, I am interested very much in this 
 argument of the honorable senator, and I think it is a very fair and 
 senatorial mode of proceeding. I have not the least objection what- 
 ever to his analysis of the arguments and speeches which I have made. 
 It is not my purpose to answer ; but I know the honorable senator is 
 proceeding in a manner which indicates what I might expect from 
 him, fairness. I beg leave to say now, rather than at some other time 
 in the debate, that I appeal to him, in the revision of his remarks, not 
 to overstate, as I think he has erroneously done, disclaimers and de- 
 nials which he assumes I have made here in this debate. On referring 
 to the few remarks which I addressed to the Senate, on the first day 
 that this question arose, he will see the precise extent to which I did 
 go ; and I would not have him present me to the people of the coun- 
 try as denying or disclaiming anything more than I have actually 
 done, and I know he does not wish it. I hope the honorable senator 
 will excuse me for interrupting him on this particular point, as I have 
 no wish to interfere with his argument. 
 
 Mr. BROWN. Certainly ; I do not wish, at this particular point, 
 to review what I have said in regard to the senator from New York, 
 my present dealing being with the senator from Massachusetts. I 
 turn over to another production of the honorable senator. AVhen I 
 stated the other day that there had been a sort of billing and cooing, 
 a sort of caressing, a sort of old-fashioned courtship, between certain 
 gentlemen here and the ultra-abolition party, the senator and his 
 friends came forward and very indignantly denied it. Denials have 
 come upon us thick and fast from that day to this, not only through 
 the senators, but through their newspaper journals all over the coun- 
 try. I have had a perfect shower of newspapers rained on me from 
 every part of the country, all indignantly denying that I was at all 
 right in assuming that there was any sort of attempt to get up a po- 
 litical marriage between the abolitionists of the Garrison and Wen- 
 dell Phillips school and the Black Republican party. I ask the sen- 
 ator from Massachusetts whether he did not, on the 20th of June, 
 1855, address this letter to Wendell Phillips? I need not say to the 
 Senate who Wendell Phillips is. It is sufficient to say that he "out- 
 Herods Herod," he " out-Garrisons Garrison," he " out- Parkers Par- 
 
15 
 
 ker." He goes further than the renowned Beecher himself. This I 
 understand to he the letter of the Senator : 
 
 " I hope, my dear sir, that we shall all strive to unite and combine all the friends of freedom; 
 that we shall forget each other's faults and shortcomings in the past ; and all labor to secure 
 that co-operation by which alone the slave is to be emancipated, and the domination of his 
 master broken. Let us remember that more than three mitlione of bondmen, groaning under 
 nameless woes, demand that we shall cease to reproach each other, and that we labor for 
 their deliverance." 
 
 Did the senator write that letter? 
 
 Mr. WILSON. Will the senator allow me a word on that subject ? 
 He has put a categorical question. I am ready to answer the ques- 
 tion ; but I would like to put my own construction on that letter. 
 
 Mr. BROWN. Any construction the senator pleases. I cannot say 
 that I will adopt his construction, but I will hear it. 
 
 Mr. WILSON. Well, Mr. President, I received an invitation from 
 Wendell Phillips to attend a meeting, and to address that meeting. 
 I wrote that letter. 
 
 Mr. BROWN. So I thought. 
 
 Mr. WILSON. I agree to every word of it now, as I did then ; and 
 there is nothing in that letter inconsistent with anything I have ut- 
 tered upon this floor. I am opposed to slavery. I am in favor of its 
 abolition everywhere where I have the power. Mr. Phillips, as the 
 senator says, takes extreme views. I differ from him altogether in 
 regard to them. He is a gentleman of great talent and character — 
 in my opinion the greatest living orator on this continent. I have 
 heard no man in the country during the last twenty years — and I have 
 heard the foremost orators of the country — that I consider his equal. 
 
 My idea is this : I want all men who are opposed to slavery to take 
 a moderate and reasonable position, to abandon the extreme notions 
 which those men entertain, to oppose the extension of slavery, sepa- 
 rate the federal government from its connexion with it, banish the 
 negro discussions that we are having in these halls, and leave slavery 
 in the slave States, where the Constitution leaves it, to the care of the 
 people of those several States. I believe that when that is done, the 
 liberal, high-minded, just men of the south will, in their own time 
 and in their own way, bring about a safe emancipation. That is my 
 view of the matter. It was so then, and is so now. 
 
 Mr. BROWN. Well, Mr. President, the senator admits that he 
 wrote the letter. My charge was, that there was an attempt, on the 
 part' of these Republican senators, to get up a political marriage with 
 the abolitionists, and the denial was to that charge. The senator 
 from Massachusetts denied the charge, and was at great pains, in his 
 speech the other day, to complain that I had made certain remarks in 
 reference to Garrison and his friends, and had coupled them with the 
 senator and his friends ; in all of which he intended to discard the 
 idea that there was any kind of affiliation or political association be- 
 tween the Republican senators here and these ultra abolitionists out 
 of doors ; and yet, when I introduce a letter which comes precisely to 
 the point, showing that the senator himself had addressed one of the 
 extremest of these men, saying : "You and I ought to act together ; 
 you and I must act together ; three millions of bondmen groan, and 
 you and I must come to their deliverance;" when I show that the 
 
16 
 
 senator addressed this appeal to the most ultra of the abolitionists, 
 the senator comes forward to palliate. But, sir, what becomes of his 
 denial that he ever courted the support or co-operation of these 
 people — 
 
 Mr. WILSON. Will the senator allow me a word? 
 Mr. BROWN. Yes, sir ; certainly. 
 
 Mr. WILSON. I made the denial ; I make it now. The Garrison 
 abolitionists do not vote. I believe them to be sincerely opposed to 
 slavery, but they do not vote. They have taken positions which, in 
 my judgment, are wrong. What Iwished was this : to have the men 
 who act with them abandon their extreme notions, and takea mode- 
 rate position, and stand where we stand — upon a purely constitutional 
 and national basis. 
 
 Mr. BROWN. Then, sir, why did the senator say to Mr. Phillips, 
 " Let us all labor together to secure the co-operation by which alone 
 the slave is to be emancipated, and the domination of his master 
 broken?" 
 
 Mr. WILSON. I explained that. 
 
 Mr. BROWN. Is not that the precise point to which Phillips is 
 fighting — to emancipate the slave and break the domination of his 
 master? Where? In the States. Is there slavery anywhere else 
 but in the States ? When you emancipate the slave, you must eman- 
 cipate the slave in the States ; and when you break the domination of 
 the master, there is no domination to be broken anywhere but in the 
 States. Then, when the senator said to Phillips, " Let us all labor 
 together to this end," was he not inviting Phillips on to his own 
 platform, or was he saying to Phillips, " My dear Phillips, let me go 
 on to your platform." [Laughter.] 
 
 Mr. WILSON. Mr. President, I think the senator is entirely mis- 
 taken, and is pushing that point further than it can be legitimately 
 carried. My idea is, and was then, that the way to break the domi- 
 nation of the master over the government of the country and over the 
 slave is, so far as we are a nation, to prevent the extension or existence 
 of slavery outside of the slave States, and then to leave the matter 
 with them to settle, because it is the only constitutional way, and the 
 only way in which I believe it can ever be done peaceably. In my 
 judgment, this federal government cannot interfere for the abolition 
 of slavery in the States without endangering the safety of the country, 
 and bringing about a state of affairs that will be detrimental to the 
 interests of both master and slave. 
 
 Mr. BROWN. If that was the idea of the senator from Massachu- 
 setts when he wrote the letter, he is certainly the most unfortunate 
 man that ever took up a pen to express an idea. While I certainly 
 shall not undertake to say that the senator's interpretation of his own 
 language is not the true interpretation, I do undertake to say, and 
 appeal to the intelligence of the Senate and the world, whether any 
 other man would put that interpretation on it. When the senator 
 declared: " Three millions of bondmen, groaning under nameless 
 woes, demand that we shall cease to reproach one another, and that 
 we labor for their deliverance," he used language which would teach 
 every man who read it to believe that he was ready for any scheme 
 
17 
 
 which looked to the emancipation of the slaves in the States. There 
 are no three millions of slaves anywhere else groaning under nameless 
 woes, nor enjoying the highest degree of human felicity, or any inter- 
 mediate slate of misery or happiness between the two; the only slaves 
 on this continent to which the Senator could have alluded, were the 
 three millions of slaves in the States ; and when he said to Wendell 
 Phillips : " You and I, your friends and my friends, must labor un- 
 ceasingly for the deliverance of those three millions of bondmen," he 
 must have meant — at least, the human mind will conclude, in the 
 absence of his own denial, that he meant — the slaves in the States. 
 He says he did not so mean, and I am bound to believe him ; but I 
 am sorry to trust his candor at the expense of his understanding. 
 
 Mr. WILSON. Without interrupting the speaker too much, I 
 wish to say that Mr. Phillips and Mr. Phillips's friends did not so 
 understand it. They know my precise and exact position. The letter 
 was probably hastily and carelessly written to a friend ; but the con- 
 struction the Senator puts on it, no man in Massachusetts ever put on it. 
 
 Mr. BROWN. I expect the Senator has been explaining it there 
 as he has here. [Laughter.] 
 
 Mr. WILSON. The question was never raised there at all. 
 
 Mr. BROWN. When he wrote the letter to Wendell Phillips, the 
 Abolitionists no doubt expected the co-operation of the Senator and 
 his friends ; but when he became startled at his own position, and 
 commenced, as he is doing now, to fall back on what he considered 
 to be a more impregnable position, I dare say Wendell Phillips said, 
 " Well, my dear Wilson, you have not spoken as candidly as I thought 
 you did." If, however, the language had been left without explana- 
 tion in speeches here or elsewhere, I venture to say Mr. Wendell 
 Phillips, and all other men, would have put the same construction on 
 it that I do. 
 
 Mr. President, I have already noticed the speeches of the two Sena- 
 tors at greater length than I had intended. The material before me 
 is not half exhausted ; but if I go on I shall be compelled to overlook 
 ■ome of their associates — I have a word for each of them. The Sena- 
 tor from New York I regard as the very Ajax Telamon of his party ; 
 and the Senator from Massachusetts may, I think, be fairly considered 
 their Jupiter Tonans. I had, therefore, to devote some time to them; 
 but I beg the others not to consider themselves slighted ; I will come 
 to them after a while. 
 
 I must, before leaving the Senator from Massachusetts, even at tho 
 risk of being tedious, say a word in reply to the speech pronounced 
 by him the other day. Almost in the outset of his speech he pro- 
 nounced in measured, studied phrase, "those twin gisters of barbarism, 
 slavery, and polygamy." 
 
 Mr. WILSON. That was a quotation. 
 
 Mr. BROWN. Well, sir, quotation or original thought, for what 
 purpose was it introduced into the Senator's speech ? If he means, 
 as he says he does, to accomplish his ends by moral suasion, by 
 finally raising up a party in the south to co-operate with him in the 
 great work of overturning slavery, let me ask, are men persuaded by 
 
18 
 
 this sort of denunciation? Is the southern slaveholder to be per- 
 suaded by being told that he is the confrere of the citizens of Utah — 
 that the man in Mississippi who owns his fifty slaves is as morally 
 corrupt as he of Utah who has his fifty wives ? If the Senator meant 
 anything, he meant precisely that. If the Senator expects to make 
 converts by that species of preaching, he will have to preach to some 
 other people than those whom I represent. Let me say now to the 
 Senator and all who sympathise with him, that I love this Union ; 
 those whom I have the honor here to represent, and in whose name I 
 speak to-day, love it ; but if we are to live together in peace, this sort 
 of denunciation must cease. This species of reviling, these taunts, 
 these insults levelled at every slaveholding family in fifteen States of 
 the Union, must come to an end, or we cannot live together in peace 
 and quietude. I say no more. 
 
 The senator denies all association with Garrison, and politicians of 
 that school ; but when I allude to what Garrison said, the senator is 
 quick to spring to his feet for the purpose of putting in a vindication. 
 I am always quick, I hope to vindicate my friends, but very slow to 
 vindicate my enemies. If they have no sympathizing friends here, 
 they can send their vindication through some other channel than 
 myself. But in the very act of vindicating his friend, Garrison, from 
 the charges which I made, the senator admitted all that I said. My 
 declaration was, that Garrison had declared, in the last canvass, that 
 if he had a million of votes to dispose of, he would give them all to 
 Fremont — of course I meant to say in the contest then going on ; in 
 the contest as between Buchanan, Fillmore, and Fremont. I did not 
 say that he preferred Fremont to all other men ; but that, as against 
 the other two, he would give his million of votes for Fremont. My 
 object was to show the bond of sympathy existing between the Ee- 
 publican senators here, and the Garrison, Fred. Douglas, and Wen- 
 dell Phillips school elsewhere. I think I made my point clear at the 
 time ; but, if I failed to do so then, I trust the senator appreciates it 
 now. It was, and is, that such was Garrison's partiality, such the 
 partiality of his extreme Abolition crew, that if they had millions of 
 votes to give^ they would, in that contest, give them all to the Ee- 
 publican candidate. Garrison would give a million of votes to Fre- 
 mont, and, in return, Fremont would no doubt give a million of votes 
 to Garrison ; and the senator, I suspect, would give his million fr> 
 either of the two, or to Gerrit Smith, or to his friend, Wendell Phil- 
 lips ; and I half suspect if Fred. Douglas was on the ticket it would 
 make no serious difference with him. [Laughter.] 
 
 I made the charge the other day, and to it there has been no denial 
 from the other side of the chamber, that in the very height of the 
 conflict for the presidency, Fred. Douglas, the free negro editor and 
 orator, took down the name of Gerrit Smith and put up the name of 
 John Charles Fremont. Why not that denied ? My point, as all 
 must have seen, was to show the tie that binds the Eepublicans on 
 this floor to the extreme Abolition party out of doors. I wanted to 
 show how they were being knit together — how, being drawn into 
 close companionship, they will, by and by, constitute but one party — 
 and then if the extreme Abolition element prevails, as it most likely 
 
19 
 
 will, the party must become, par excellence, the Abolition party. I 
 believe that thousands of good men, now in the Kepublican ranks, 
 will abandon them if they come to understand the designs of the 
 leaders. I meant to expose these designs — to show that there was a 
 plan on foot to Garrisonize the whole party ; and if I have done any- 
 thing towards accomplishing this end I am satisfied. 
 
 There are other points in the senator's speech, to which I will 
 reply briefly^ He and others have denied that there was anything of 
 sectionalism in the late contest ; and their denial is based, if I under- 
 stand them correctly, on the ground that the mere fact of their can- 
 didates for President and Vice President being from the same section 
 of the Union, did not establish sectionalism in the ticket. The sena- 
 tor cited the fact that Mr. Calhoun was upon the same ticket with 
 G-eneral Jackson, and yet, he said, there was no charge of sectional- 
 ism then. Let me say to the senator, none but the feeblest mind 
 could ever have pretended that the mere fact of both candidates being 
 from the same section afforded evidence of sectionalism. I can select 
 a ticket from Vermont and Massachusetts to-day— and surely it would 
 be as hard to get it there as anywhere else — which would be purely 
 national ; and so I could select one from the South which would be 
 purely sectional as against the South. Why, sir, suppose Cassius M. 
 Clay, of Kentucky, were nominated for the Presidency, and Francis 
 P. Blair, of Maryland, for the Vice Presidency : does any one doubt 
 that such a ticket would be a sectional ticket? It would be a ticket 
 hostile to the South, although both the nominees reside in slavehold- 
 ing States ? Surely I need not say to the senator that it is the senti- 
 ment of the party, and of its candidates, that constitute its sectionality, 
 and not the residence of one or both its nominees. 
 
 Are your sentiments national ? Were not the sentiments which 
 you avowed in the late canvass confined exclusively to the favor of 
 one section? Were they not uniformly hostility to the other ? Does 
 not the country so recognize them? The senator himself, in the 
 progress of his speech, and while uttering his complaint that we of 
 the South did not tolerate speakers who entertain his opinion, gave 
 us the best evidence of the sectionalism of his party. " Why," said 
 he, "did we not have advocates in the South?" "Because," he 
 answered, "you would not let the friends of our ticket speak there." 
 Why did we not let them speak ? Was it because they were national 
 in their sentiments ? Was it because they came to advocate senti- 
 ments equally acceptable to the North and to the South, equally 
 favorable^ to the one section as to the other ? No, sir, the senator 
 knows this was not the reason. The senator knew perfectly well that 
 the reason why orators of his party were not allowed to speak in the 
 South was simply this : that they came to speak against our institu- 
 tions, against our domestic peace, against our domestic quietude, 
 against our_ domestic safety— at least against what we believe to be 
 our domestic peace, safety, and quietude ; and of this we simply 
 claimed to be the best judges. The charge that we have stifled de- 
 bate or attacked the freedom of speech is not true, and those who 
 make it know it is not true. 
 
 But, sir, the object of the Senator in introducing this point wag to 
 
20 
 
 complain of the want of liberality in the Sonth. " Why," said he, 
 " your southern people will not permit northern men to go there and 
 express their honest sentiments. When they do go, you get up mobs 
 and drive them out." Let me say to the Senator, that when he or 
 his friends come to the South to utter national sentiments, they will be 
 heard with attention and listened to with deference. But when they 
 come to preach such sentiments as a Senator on this floor has been 
 heard to utter within the last week, they may deem it fortunate if 
 they escape the iury of an outraged people. When any man, whether 
 he be a Senator or a private citizen, comes to tell our slaves " that 
 they have a right to murder their masters, and that he will not advise 
 them not to do it," we consider it no breach of hospitality, no viola- 
 tion of the freedom of speech, to say that such sentiments shall not be 
 expressed in our midst. If the Senator shall ever come to Mississippi 
 and say there what I understand he has said recently in this city, he 
 will be ejected, if, indeed no severer punishment shall be inflicted on 
 him. 
 
 Mr. WILSON. Do I understand theSenator from Mississippi to state 
 that I have said in this city any thing of that kind — that I would ad- 
 vise the slaves to cut their master's throats, or in any way whatever 
 commit any violence? 
 
 Mr. BROWN. I undertake to say, not what the Senator has said, but 
 what I understand he has said, from gentlemen who come to me 
 avouched as men of character, namely: that he did say, in a public 
 hotel in this city, in the last five days, that the slaves had a right to 
 kill their masters, and that he would not advise them not to cut their 
 masters' throats. 
 
 Mr. WILSON. Mr. President, I desire to say here now, that in this 
 city, or out of this city, I never harbored a thought of that character, 
 and never gave it utterance — never at any time, or upon any occasion. 
 If I could speak to the slaves of the South I would utter no voice of 
 that character ; I would advise no violence whatever. I do not be- 
 lieve in it ; I would not advise it ; on the contrary, I believe that any 
 insurrections, any acts of violence on their part, can only end in one 
 way, and that is in their own injury. 
 
 Mr. BBOWN. Mr. President, I certainly shall make no question as 
 to the veracity of the Senator. I have repeated what I have heard. I 
 have repeated what I have in writing from a man whom gentlemen of 
 the very highest character assure me is a man of respectability and 
 honor. He told me that he heard the Senator say so ; and he asserts, 
 likewise, that there were other witnesses present, whose names he gave 
 me. If the Senator denies the charge, of course his denial ends the 
 controversy. I am not to stand up in the face of the Senate and on 
 any proof insist that a Senator has spoken falsely. It is not my duty 
 to do so. I will have no question of that sort with the Senator from 
 Massachusetts or any one else ; but if he desires to know upon what 
 authority I made the statement, I am prepared here, or upon a private 
 call, to produce the evidence. 
 
 Much has been said, Mr. President, of an irritating character, on 
 both sides of this slavery question. I do not know that the breach 
 between the North and the South can ever be healed. But it is very 
 
21 
 
 certain that those who desire peace should throw their oil on the water 
 and not into the fire. While, therefore, I shall, as always heretofore, 
 refuse to make unmanly concessions, I will abstain from saying any 
 thing that is irritating or unnecessarily severe. I am not ashamed to 
 say that I want peace. 
 
 Senators on the other side of the chamber, and their sympathizing 
 friends all over the country, deplore the condition of the black man in 
 the South. I shall not pause now to contrast his condition there with 
 what it is in his native country. If the Christian religion be a reality — 
 and in its sublime truths I am a firm believer — I am at a loss to un- 
 derstand how any man can pretend that the barbarian and cannibal, 
 standing on the shores of Africa, and blessed with freedom, is better 
 off than the civilized and evangelized slave on a southern plantation, 
 cursed with bondage. Allowing all you say of the horrors of slavery 
 to be true, they are more than compensated by the moral and religious 
 elevation of the African in this country. But what you say is not 
 true, and all the world knows it is not. One thing I may mention 
 that is true beyond all controversy, and that is, that those most 
 familiar with slavery see the least of its horrors. I speak not alone of 
 those who live in the South, and who see it every day in all its forms ; 
 but of those in the free States most contiguous to it. The people in 
 southern Illinois and the eastern part of Indiana live almost in sight 
 of slavery, and mingle with it almost every day in Kentucky and Mis- 
 souri. The people in these localities, more than any others in the free 
 States, trade to the South ; they visit the plantations, and mingle 
 freely with the slaves and with their masters. The result is that they 
 discard the sickly sentimentality so freely indulged in by those who 
 know nothing of slavery except as they see it in Abolition newspapers 
 and Black Republican speeches. Fourteen counties in southern Illinois 
 gave Buchanan fourteen thousand votes, and Fremont less than four 
 hundred. I suppose the mob did not drive the Republican orators out 
 of that country, as they did from the southern States ; or if they did, 
 I hope it is not to be charged to the account of the slaveocracy. The 
 simple truth is, Mr. President, there is not one man in a thousand, 
 who knows any thing of slavery practically, that does not believe it to 
 be the normal condition of the negro race. Seen through the inter- 
 stices of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Garrison's Liberator, or one of the 
 Senator's speeches, it is, I grant you, a frightful outrage on humanity. 
 
 The senator alluded, the other day, to certain speeches made by 
 leading statesmen in Virginia, which he assured us were more or less 
 favorable to his side of this question. Does the senator know why 
 such speeches are not made now ? Does he know why the ameliorat- 
 ing process in the condition of the slave, then- going on, has ceased? 
 Does he know why there are thousands of -slaves in bondage to-day 
 who might otherwise have been free? .Does he know why the slaves 
 are not educated? why their liberty is restricted, and their bondage 
 made to sit more heavily upon them ? If lie does not, I will tell him. 
 It is because of the impertinent intermeddlin- of hi mself and his friends 
 with matters that did not conce/n them. 
 
 The senator told us, the other day, on what terms we could get his 
 .sympathy. Let me tell him on what terms he can get our respect and 
 
22 
 
 tlie gratitude of the slave. He can get both by simply minding bis 
 own business. His present policy is annoying to us and detrimental 
 to the slave. I use those words in their proper sense. He may annoy 
 and vex the master ; but if he lets slavery alone in the States, as he 
 says he will, he will do him no harm. He may damage the slave by 
 vexing the master ; but if he leaves the slave in bondage, he will do 
 him no good. If you do not mean to overthrow slavery in the States, 
 quit talking about it, quit exciting the fears of the master without a 
 cause, and quit arousing the hopes of the slave without a purpose. 
 That is my advice, and I charge nothing for it. 
 
 There is one point of attack against slavery which seems to be a 
 favorite with all its assailants in the Senate, and out of it — and that 
 is, its enervating and destroying effect on the people and States where 
 it exists. The Senator from Massachusetts went out of his way, the 
 other day, to tell us that slavery had converted Mount Vernon into a 
 jungle. While these charges are made and dwelt on with peculiar 
 unction by the Senator from Massachusetts, it is curious to read and 
 ponder the speeches of the Senator from New York, appealing to 
 twenty-five millions of freemen to rise in their majesty and put down 
 the three hundred and fifty thousand slaveholding aristocrats, who 
 are ruling the country, sapping the foundations of liberty, and estab- 
 lishing an aristocracy in our midst. If slavery blights as with a mil- 
 dew everything that it touches ; if it converts cultivated fields into 
 wild jungles, and stately mansions into bat-roosts ; if it renders the 
 people imbecile in morals and mentally impotent ; is it not a little 
 strange that three hundred and fifty thousand slaveholders should so 
 have got the start of all the world, that twenty-five millions of free- 
 men are called into action to curb their growing power ? The truth 
 is felt, Mr. President, though it is not acknowledged, that slavery has 
 an elevating and ennobling effect on the white man. It is not true 
 that the intellectual giants of the South, who have guided the destiny 
 of the nation through, so many years, are but the feeble progeny of an 
 imbecile race, rendered morally oblique and intellectually impotent by 
 the existence of slavery in the southern States. It is not true that 
 three hundred and fifty thousand slaveholders, living in jungles, with 
 no activity of mind, and no energy of body, have so excited the fears 
 of the senator from New York. When we compare our Washingtons, 
 Jeffersons, Madisons, Henrys, Marshalls, Jacksons, and Calhouns, 
 with your greatest and best men, no one can say, with truth, that we 
 have cause to blush. 
 
 But you tell us that your people are more progressive than ours. 
 In the mechanic arts I grant that they are. Your work-shops are 
 moase numerous, and on a larger scale than ours. The work-shop is 
 the home of vast numbers of your people. In its arts they excel, and 
 we rejoice at their success. We rejoice, because it is for our mutual 
 advantage that they succeed. We rejoice still more, because their 
 success is a part of the common inheritance of the whole people. On 
 the other hand, our home is in the cotton, sugar, rice, and tobacco 
 fields of the South. In our department who will deny that we have 
 succeeded as well as you ? Nowhere on the habitable globe has the 
 culture of cotton been brought to such perfection as in the southern 
 
23 
 
 States of this Union. If gentlemen would only reflect that a proper 
 division of labor, and the highest degree of success in every depart- 
 ment, is the best evidence of national prosperity, these ill-natured 
 flings at the South would cease at once. 
 
 I have no time to pursue this train of thought, though it might be 
 done with profit both to the North and to the South. Whatever the 
 northern people may say of us, we shall never cease to rejoice in their 
 prosperity. 
 
 I must pass on, Mr. President, because I find that my voice is fail- 
 ing me, and even my physical strength is giving way.* The senator 
 from Maine [Mr. Fessenden] the other day told us that the South was 
 constantly making demands ; that the South demanded that such and 
 such things should be done by Congress ; and upon the failure of com- 
 pliance we threatened a dissolution of the Union. If the senator has 
 so understood us, allow me to say to him that he has understood us 
 amiss. In making that declaration he did us grievous wrong. The 
 South has demanded nothing. She never came to your doors with a 
 petition for favor at your hands. She never asked affirmative legis- 
 lation from this government, orj the subject of slavery, since it has had 
 an existence, save in the pursuit of a clear and admitted constitutional 
 right'. Her position has been one of opposition to your action. Not 
 being a petitioner, she has uniformly come here to remonstrate against 
 your action. Her whole demand, her whole policy, might at any mo- 
 ment have been summed up, and it is now, in these three short words : 
 "Let us alone." As some evidence that I am right on that question, 
 I beg to read for the information of the senator from Maine the posi- 
 tions taken by my own State, not through her legislature, not through 
 any informal convention, not through any primary mass meeting 
 called by a newspaper, but through a convention of her people law- 
 fully called to express her sovereign will in reference to this whole 
 matter in controversy. So far as she is concerned, she demands no- 
 thing ; and I believe I can appeal with perfect confidence to senators 
 from all the southern- States to bear me witness that her position is 
 substantially the position of their States. First, she says there shall 
 be no interference by congressional legislation with the institution of 
 slavery in the States. She certainly asks nothing in that but your 
 forbearance. She then says, second, the slave trade between" the 
 States shall not be interfered with by action of Congress. Then she 
 says, third, there shall be no action of Congress on the subject of 
 slavery in the District of Columbia, or any place subject to the juris- 
 diction of Congress, incompatible with the safety and domestic tran- 
 quility, or the rights and honor of the slaveholding States. Then 
 she says, fourth, that the refusal of Congress to admit a new State, 
 on the ground of her tolerating slavery within her limits, would be 
 subject for complaint ; and declares, fifth, that Congress shall pass no 
 law prohibiting slavery in any of the Territories ; and, sixth, that 
 the repeal of the fugitive slave law, or the neglect or refusal of the 
 General Government to enforce the constitutional provision for the re- 
 covery of fugitive slaves, would be ground of complaint. 
 
 These are six positions taken in convention, and neither one of 
 them looks to affirmative action on the part of the Government ; 
 
24 
 
 neither of them demands anything but your forbearance ; neither of 
 them demands anything except what may be summed up in three 
 words — let us alone. Beyond that I undertake to say there is not 
 now, has not been, and, in my opinion, never will be, any consider- 
 able number of southern people demanding anything. Let us alone; 
 leave us where we were left by the Constitution of the United States; 
 cease to interfere with us ; cease to make war upon us aud our insti- 
 tutions, and our domestic safety, and we shall move on harmoniously 
 together as our fathers did before us. 
 
 I feel, Mr. President, that 1 ought to say a word in reference to 
 our position as regards the Territories. There seems to me to have 
 been a most persevering attempt commenced, and pertinaciously kept 
 up, throughout all the northern States, to misrepresent the position 
 of the southern States and people on this point. What have we 
 asked? What do we ask now? Simply to be treated as equals — to 
 be allowed our equal rights and our equal position in the Territories. 
 The soil, all must admit, is the common property of all the people or 
 of all the States. We have asked that Congress shall so treat it, and 
 make no insulting discrimination between the people of Mississippi 
 and the people of Massachusetts — between the people of "New York 
 and the people of Virginia ; but that all alike shall be allowed to go 
 to the Territories, and take with them whatever is recognized as pro- 
 perty by the laws of the State from which they go. We have insisted, 
 and do yet insist, that whoever makes laws for the Territories is as 
 much bound to give protection to us and our property, as to give pro- 
 tection to the northern man and his property. No right exists to 
 discriminate against us, and we ask no discrimination in our favor. 
 I appeal to the plain common sense of every man, if in this there has 
 been anything unreasonable. In the name of all that is just, has not 
 the citizen'of Virginia the same right to go to Kansas or any other 
 Territory, and take with him that which is recognized as property by 
 the laws of Virginia, as a New Yorker has to. go and take with him 
 that which is recognized as property by the laws of New York? 
 Have citizens of Massachusetts, let me ask, any higher privileges in 
 the Territory than citizens of Mississippi? And if so, where did 
 they obtain them ? How did they derive them? By what authority 
 do they undertake to claim for themselves exclusive privileges in th« 
 Territories? If gentlemen are prepared to meet us on this ground of 
 equality, the whole matter in controversy, as regards the Territories, 
 is settled at once. If any Mississippian shall attempt to set up au- 
 thority through Congress, the Territories, the people, or the States, 
 to exclude citizens of Massachusetts, Maine, New York, New Hamp- 
 shire, or of any other State, from the common Territory, he will find 
 himself opposed by the whole mass of southern people. We have 
 always said, as I say to-day, that the citizens of the New England 
 States, the citizens of all the free States, have the same right to go 
 to the Territories and take with them that which is recognized as pro- 
 perty by the laws of their States, as we claim for ourselves, to go and 
 take that which is recognized as property by the laws of the States 
 from which we go. Then as to the protection of property after it gets 
 there — whoever makes laws for the protection of the property of 
 
25 
 
 citizens of Maine, New York, New Hampshire, or Massachusetts, is, 
 in my judgment— and I stand on that claim— equally bound to make 
 laws for the protection of the property of Mississippians, Virginians, 
 and Tennesseeans. If you ask no protection for your property- 
 through congressional legislation or through territorial legislation, 
 we shall ask none for ours. If you ask protection for your property, 
 we say we are equally entitled to protection for ours. We say that 
 neither Congress nor the Territorial legislature shall, with our con- 
 sent, make any insulting discrimination between the people and pro- 
 perty of one section of the Union, and the people and property of any 
 other section— between the property of a citizen of New Hampshire 
 or Massachusetts, and the property of a citizen of Maryland or Mis- 
 sissippi. Can we maintain ourselves on the soundness of this posi- 
 tion? And if not, why? 
 
 Do gentlemen claim that we are under the ban of the Constitution? 
 Do gentlemen pretend that the Constitution which gives us our au- 
 thority to be here, which authorizes me to address this august body 
 to-day, which brings us into this council house, discriminates against 
 the property of the fifteen southern States of this Union? Do they 
 pretend that there is anything in that Constitution which denies to 
 our property equal protection in the Territories with the property of 
 the other sixteen States of the Union ? I undertake to say that it is 
 the only article of property which is clearly and distinctly recognized 
 by the Constitution. Take anything else, merchandise, live-stock, 
 anything you please, and you can find nothing in the Constitution 
 which specially and specifically looks to its recognition as property. 
 The Constitution does recognize persons held to service (slaves) as 
 property, and it recognizes nothing else by name. Every other kind 
 of property is left to the protection of local or State legislation. Not 
 a word is found in the Constitution about merchandise, live-stock, or 
 money as property. Persons bound to service (slaves) alone are men- 
 tioned. Then with what pretence of justice is it said, that this pro- 
 perty is under the ban of the Constitution, or that it is not equally 
 entitled to protection with any other kind of property ? 
 
 The southern States, Mr. President, have been accused of violence 
 in the maintenance of their rights under the Constitution, as they 
 understand them. Our people are set down as lawless, and are con- 
 stantly charged with attempts to carry their points by force. A 
 stranger would be very apt to conclude from the accounts given of us, 
 that every southern man was a walking citadel. I shall make no de- 
 fense against charges like this— our States and our people stand on 
 the defensive. Never, sir, never since the government was founded, 
 has the North had reason to complain that either the southern States 
 or the southern people have interfered with their domestic concerns. 
 I have no reproaches to utter ; but can our northern friends say as 
 much ? Can they say that they have never interfered with our do- 
 mestic affairs? 
 
 When the Kansas bill was passed, we hoped there would be an end 
 of this controversy. It was intended to take the question of slavery 
 out of Congress, and transfer it to the people of the Territory where it 
 properly belonged, and who, as we all agreed, had the right at the, 
 
2$ 
 
 proper time, to settle it for themselves. What the proper time may be: 
 was a subject left open for discussion ; and to this point I will recur 
 presently. 
 
 It certainly was not contemplated by any of us that violence was to 
 be used by any party to coerce a decision in Kansas. The people 
 there, those who were bona fide citizens of the Territory, were to be 
 left perfectly free to settle their domestic affairs in their own way. 
 subject to but one influence, and that the benign and peaceful influ- 
 ence of the Constitution. No sooner had this bill passed than a con- 
 certed and powerful effort was set on foot here, and rapidly taken up 
 in the New England States, to colonize the Territory with a vagrant 
 population. Men were enlisted and sent there, not to cultivate the 
 soil, not to erect work- shops and carry on the mechanic arts — no, not 
 for these purposes. They went not with the artizan's tools or the 
 implements of husbandry in their hands., but with rifles, bowie knives, 
 and other deadly weapons. Their object could not be mistaken. 
 Instead of colonizing the countrv, and making for themselves benefi- 
 cent and wholesome laws — laws under which they meant themselves 
 to live — people went to Kansas for no higher purpose than to fan the 
 flames of discord, and to make laws from which they meant themselves 
 to flee. They went for mischief, and they got it ; they sowed the 
 whirlwind, and reaped the storm. They were sent to Kansas to make 
 Kansas a free State nolens volens, and the Missourians were inflamed 
 to madness by their conduct. It was not, sir, that these men went, or 
 the States from which they went, that stirred the blood of Missourians,. 
 but it was the purpose for which they went. "When the Kansas bill 
 passed/very few of us expected Kansas to become a slave State, and 
 very few of us cared much whether it did or not. But when we saw 
 an attempt made by the enemies of slavery to plant on the borders of 
 a slave State a free- soil colony, with no higher purpose than to harass 
 that State — when we saw an attempt made by strangers to enslave the 
 bona fide white settlers in Kansas, by forcing on them, not a Kansas 
 but a New England government, our people rose en masse, and swore, 
 by the God that made them, these things should not be. 
 
 The senator from New Hampshire [Mr. Hale] the other day paraded 
 before the Senate a handbill — and he did it with a flourish of trum- 
 pets that would have done honor to the fat knight when he claimed 
 the credit of killing Hotspur. The handbill spoke of Buchanan and 
 Breckinridge, and Free Kansas. The senator evidently thought he 
 had made a grand discovery. I certainly do not mean to approve of 
 that handbill. It probably suggested an erroneous idea to many who 
 saw it. It may have suggested that the Democratic party was for 
 Kansas free, as the senator fr; m New Hampshire understood the word 
 "free ;" and if it did, it suggested a falsehood. The Democratic party 
 as a party is neither for free Kansas nor slave Kansas, as the free-soilers 
 understand the words " free" and "slave." The Democratic party 
 is for leaving Kansas perfectly free, at the right time, to settle the 
 slavery question for herself, restrained only, as we all are in our action, 
 by the provisions of the Federal Constitution. In this sense the 
 Democrats are for free Kansas. The senator's idea, if I understand 
 him, is to make Kansas free by releasing the black man from the au- 
 
27 
 
 thority of his master, and then force a government on the white people 
 in the Territory through the agency of New England emigrant aid 
 societies. His free Kansas makes the negro free by enslaving the 
 white man ; but my fr.ee Kansas makes the white man free, and leaves 
 the negro where the Constitution left him — subject to the authority of 
 his master. 
 
 I was somewhat surprised, Mr. President, the other day, to hear 
 the senator from Illinois, [Mr. Trumbull,] in catechising the senator 
 from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Bigler,] who was then addressing the Senate, 
 raise the question as to how far we on the Democratic side of the 
 house concurred in opinion upon the mooted point of squatter sove- 
 reignty. I suppose the object of the senator in introducing that point 
 was to make mischief — to stir up strife between senators on this side 
 of the chamber. If that was his purpose, let me say to him that he 
 fell, as he will continue to fall, very far short of his mark. That 
 there may be shades of difference in our opinions is very likely ; that 
 I do not, on every point, concur with my distinguished and venerable 
 friend from Michigan is probable ; but that there is any difference be- 
 tween us which can by possibility prevent our acting "in harmony for 
 the accomplishment of certain great purposes which the national 
 Democracy have in view, I utterly deny. I should prefer to have my 
 friend agree with me, as he may prefer to have me agree with him ; but 
 our difference is not such, a I shall presently show, that we may not, 
 without sacrifice on either side, act together on practical issues. 
 
 But, sir, how comes it that the senator from Illinois, how 
 comes it that other senators on his side have all of a sudden 
 found something so monstrous in this doctrine of squatter sove- 
 reignty ? When had we the first evidence exhibited to us of the 
 power of squatter sovereignty on this continent? Excuse me, sir, 
 but I undertake to say, that the first exhibition of it was in the State 
 which you have the honor solely at this moment to represent on the 
 floor of the Senate, [Mr. Weller in the chair.] When the people of 
 California assembled in convention, and undertook to frame a State 
 constitution for themselves, they were all squatters ; they were in the 
 country without authority of law : there was no law authorizing them 
 to be there. When they assembled in convention on the high mission 
 of making a State constitution, they assembled there to perform an 
 act of sovereignty ; when they made the constitution and set up a 
 State government in all its forms, it was an act of sovereignty per- 
 formed by squatters and by nobody else. 
 
 Now, sir, I ask senators on the other side of the chamber, whether 
 they did not sanction that proceeding? I pray you, gentlemen, were 
 you not, one and all, in favor of admitting California under her 
 squatter-sovereignty constitution ? Was not the senator from Illinois 
 the advocate for the admission of California under the constitution 
 thus formed ? Was not the Senator from New York, and he from 
 Massachusetts, and he from Ohio, all around the chamber, wherever 
 they are, were they not friends of the admission of California under 
 her squatter-sovereignty constitution? Then what right have they 
 to complain of squatter-sovereignty? And then who was the first 
 representative of squatter-sovereignty on this floor ? When California 
 was admitted, there were already at the door of the Senate two gen- 
 
28 
 
 tlemen asking for admission. One of them was John Charles Fre- 
 mont. He came here as a senator, the first who presented himself 
 from California, and he was the very embodiment of squatter-sove- 
 reignty. He had no constituency but a squatter-sovereignty constit- 
 uency. He came from no State but a State brought into being by 
 squatter-sovereigns. These gentlemen, to a man, advocated his ad- 
 mission. They not only went for the admission of the State, but for 
 the admission of her senators. Thus they endorsed the whole pro- 
 ceeding up to that time. I suspect that they, and all their class of 
 politicians, are very much like one I heard speaking lately. He said 
 he was for squatter-sovereignty if it worked out in his favor, and 
 against it if it did not. 
 
 Jn my opinion, squatter-sovereignty is a misnomer, and territorial 
 sovereignty a humbug. I understand, sir, what is meant by State 
 sovereignty, and in my opinton there is no other kind of sovereignty 
 existing in this country. Squatter-sovereignty, territorial sovereignty, 
 and popular sovereignty, (when applied to the Territories,) all belong 
 to the same category, and they are all political absurdities in my 
 opinion. But I am not going to bore the Senate by giving the reason! 
 why I think so. 
 
 We agreed to let Kansas and all the other Territories manage their 
 own affairs in their own way, subject only to the Constitution. Wt 
 differed as to what a Territory might rightfully do under the Consti- 
 tution. My friend from Michigan [Mr. Cass] thought, and still thinki, 
 a territorial legislature, such as that in Kansas, has the right, under 
 the Constitution, to exclude slavery. I think differently. He is not 
 seeking to have his ideas enacted into a law by Congress ; nor am I. 
 He admits that if the legislature of Kansas has not the right under 
 the Constitution to exclude slavery, Congress cannot confer it ; and I 
 know, if the legislature has the right Congress cannot take it away. 
 Therefore, neither of us propose that Congress shall do anything. 
 We voted together on the Kansas bill, and agreed then to refer all our 
 difference of opinion to the Supreme Court of the United States — the 
 only tribunal on earth competent to decide between us. When that 
 decision is rendered, we both stand solemnly pledged to abide by it. 
 I speak not now of what a sovereign State, in the exercise of her re- 
 served rights, may do — that is a subject for future consideration and 
 decision. Now, sir, the difference between my honorable friend and 
 myself is precisely the difference between Democrats who believe in 
 squatter-sovereignty, and Democrats who do not believe in it. 
 
 If an unorganized Territory, such as California was in 1849, such 
 as Kansas was in 1853, such as the Indian Territory outside of Ar- 
 kansas now is, shall undertake to exclude slavery, the Senator from 
 Michigan and myself agree that it undertakes to do what it has no 
 right to do. But if an organized Territory, like Kansas or Nebraska 
 undertakes, through its legislative council, to exclude slavery, the 
 senator thinks they have the right to do it. I do not think so. Thio 
 he calls popular sovereignty. I call it the assumption of a right not 
 conferred by the Constitution, and therefore not existing in the Terri- 
 tory. He may be right. I think he is not. But neither of us desire* 
 or expects Congress to decide between us. 
 
 The senator from Illinois, [Mr. Trumbull,] the other day interro- 
 
29 
 
 gated the senator from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Bigler,] as to what Mr. . 
 Buchanan's views were on this point My friend from Pennsylvania 
 declined to reply, because he had no authority to do so. The friends 
 of Mr. Buchanan were satisfied with his position on this point before 
 they nominated and elected him, and they are not likely to fall out 
 with him now on account of any suggestions coming from his enemies, 
 secret or open. That he will hold the scales of justice in equal bal- 
 ance between the North and the South I have no doubt ; and if he 
 does, his friends North and South will adhere to him. They were 
 strong enough to elect him ; and if he fulfils their hopes, as I am 
 sure he will, they will show themselves strong enough to carry his 
 administration through in triumph. Mr. Buchanan may laugh his 
 enemies to scorn. He has only to feel the inspiration that moved the 
 hearts of his friends at Cincinnati, and stand firmly on the platform 
 laid down by them, and they will throw over him their arms, and 
 build around him a rampart that will defy the power of the Black Re- 
 publicans and all their allies. 
 
 But, to return to the Territories : We of the Democratic faith all 
 agree that they may, at the proper time, settle the slavery question 
 for themselves. Some think it may be done sooner ; but we all agree 
 that when the people of a Territory meet in convention to frame a 
 State constitution, they may, in that constitution, admit or exclude 
 •lavery, as they please ; and we agree, further, that their decision is 
 final. If Kansas comes here with a constitution made by her bona 
 fide people, free from all outside influences, excluding slavery, there 
 is not a Democrat in either House of Congress who will not vote for 
 her admission ; and if, on the other hand, she comes with a constitu- 
 tion similarly made tolerating slavery, there is not a Democrat who 
 will not vote for her admission. .Breakup your emigrant aid societies 
 at the North, and all interference from the South will cease. Then* 
 Kansas, being left perfectly free to regulate her domestic affairs in 
 her own way, may assemble her people in convention, frame her con- 
 stitution to suit herself, admit or exclude slavery as she pleases, and 
 she will be welcomed into the Union with open arms by every friend 
 of free institutions from the Aristook to the Rio Grande, and from the 
 Atlantic to the far-off Pacific. Sir, the Democracy has stood for fifty 
 i years, like our own ocean-bound Republic. The waves of faction have 
 beaten upon it, and they have broken, in harmless ripples, at its feet. 
 It stands to-day a fit type of our glorious country — the hope of the op- 
 pressed in every land, and a beacon-light to the sons of freedom 
 throughout the world. It will uphold the Constitution. It will pre- 
 serve the Union. It will disappoint the tyrants of the Old World, 
 and the enemies of liberty in the New. Democracy will go on con- 
 quering and to conquer, until all parties shall confess its dominion, 
 and the whole world be converted to the sublime truths which it 
 teaches. This is its mission. N 
 
 We mean, Mr. President, to settle this slavery question on a firm 
 and lasting, because on a just, liberal, and constitutional basis. We 
 mean to stop agitation ; we mean to give repose to the South, and 
 quiet to the whole country ; we mean to rout the Abolitionists and 
 bury Black Republicanism so low that the sound of Gabriel's trumpet 
 will not reach it on the day of judgment ! This is our hope ; this our 
 
30 
 
 prayer ; this our confident expectation ; but if we shall be deceived in 
 this — if it shall please God to prosper our enemies — if there shall be 
 no settlement — if agitation is kept up — if the South can have no 
 peace — if our enemies have the power, and are resolved to use it in 
 breaking up the Union, and trampling the Constitution under foot — 
 then we will turn to the senator from New York, the great chieftain 
 of his party, and the author of all our woes, and we will say to him 
 and his infatuated allies, as Abram said to Lot: " Let there be no 
 strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdsmen 
 and thy herdsmen, for we are brethren. Is not the whole land before 
 thee ? Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me : if thou wilt take the 
 left hand, then I will go to the right ; or if thou depart to the right 
 hand, then I will go to the left." If this appeal shall fail to reach 
 the heart of the senator and his allies, there will be but one alterna- 
 tive left us, and that an appeal to the god of battles. May Heaven, 
 in its mercy, avert such a calamity ! 
 
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