I go
further than that; it must emanate from the hearts of a people
disposed to stand by it; and if they will not stand by it, I will not
associate with them.

I want to preserve this Union; I want to maintain the constitutional
rights of all classes, North and South; but to give me a mere written
guarantee on parchment, and file it in the office of the Secretary of
State, with a predetermination in the hearts and minds of the northern
people inculcated and instructed to violate it, I cannot live with,
and I will not. I would rather go where I naturally belong, with
southern men; but if the true-hearted, the patriotic, and the
honorable portion of the North will reverse this inculcated spirit of
hostility to southern institutions, and bring them up to the mark
where they will recognize constitutional guarantees, then I say,
"Hail, thou my brother, we can go together;" but never till that comes
to pass. We have approached that period in our country's history when
there should be no cheating or attempt to cheat. We must understand
each other, and make a permanent, lasting Union, or a permanent,
lasting, peaceful separation.

This proposition presented by the Peace Conference, as it is called, I
think the merest twaddle--and I use the term with entire respect to
the members--the merest twaddle that ever was presented to a thinking
people. The proposition of the Senator from Kentucky has some sense in
it. If he chooses to desert his own, I shall not complain of him; for
I know that warm, patriotic impulses move him in all his action; but I
cannot accept the other, and I shall vote against every one of its
provisions. When it is said to me that the territory south of 36 deg. 30'
has adopted slavery--that New Mexico has--I must reply to Senators
that they misunderstand the law. New Mexico has never adopted slavery.
New Mexico has done this: she has provided remedies for redress of
wrongs, including wrongs affecting slave property; but she has never
established slavery; nor has Utah. Utah has never even recognized it
by implication. Utah passed a law of this character: apprentices bound
to service for a period of years may be held there; but when their
servitude has expired, according to their articles of apprenticeship,
they are free; so that the law of Utah absolutely, if it has any
effect, prohibits slavery.

Senators overlook these facts. I take the broad and the bold and the
unmistakable ground, not that the Constitut