ms--some by their
Legislatures, some by their Executives--met the invitation of
Virginia, and deputed their commissioners to the conference in
Washington, to see if they could agree upon a mode of adjustment. We
have the report of that Conference before us now, presented through a
committee of this body; and they propose an additional article to the
Constitution. Mr. President, the honorable Senator from Kentucky, who
has pronounced so deserved a eulogium upon that body, does not exceed
me in the respect which I bear to it. If there be one more than
another Senator upon whom it would devolve to treat the work of that
Convention with peculiar respect, it would devolve upon me and my
colleague, because they met at the invitation of my State. I yield to
none in the respect which I bear to those gentlemen or to the purity
of their motives in the results which they have attained in that
Conference; but, sir, I am bound by my obligations to the
Constitution, by my honor as a man, by my faith to my own State, to
understand what they have done, and to exhibit it either in
recommendation or disapproval, as my judgment may dictate. _Nullius
addictus jurare in verba magistri._

I admit no authority to bind my judgment as a representative of one of
the States of the Union. I yield my respect to what they have done;
but I will scan it, and if, in my honest, unbiased judgment, I cannot
recommend it as an amendment to the Constitution, I am bound to
withhold that recommendation, and to give the reasons for it.

As I have said, sir, the State of Virginia, finding that Congress was
at a loss for a mode of adjustment, invited the States to send
commissioners here for this purpose:

"To agree upon something which would afford to the people of
the slaveholding States adequate guarantees for the security
of their rights."

Virginia knew that, under the Constitution as it was interpreted under
the constituted authorities of the country as they have been elected,
there was no security for their rights; and it was in the hope of
obtaining such a security--Congress failing to agree upon it--that, at
her invitation, these gentlemen from the different States met here in
conference. I am to look, therefore, to their work, and to see if it
affords that security for their rights; and if I am satisfied in my
own judgment, as I honestly am--and the reasons for which I am now to
announce to the world--that it not only affords no sec