gh altogether if we had the strength
to do so. I voted against every proposition to amend. I voted against
Mr. BROWN'S, and I voted against Mr. CLINGMAN'S, and I voted against
every other amendment that was calculated to weaken or embarrass the
passage of the resolutions. Yet I am represented here as having voted
against affording protection to slave property in the Territories! I
ask again, if any Senator, if any man who can read, can say that the
fourth resolution, for which I did vote and for which I struggled and
contended, does not declare that slave property shall be protected in
the common Territories of our country.

Could any thing be stronger than the fourth resolution? Could any man
desire a more direct declaration of principles than that? Upon the
yeas and nays I voted for it. I voted against the amendment that was
adopted, and afterwards reconsidered. How, then, can a man arraign me
before the country as having said upon oath, on the 25th of May last,
that slave property should not be protected in the common Territories
with other property? I have always held that all property should be
protected, slave as well as other property; that it should have the
same protection as, and no more protection than any other property.
That they do not secure all this, is the objection I have to the
amendments to the Constitution proposed by the Peace Conference. They
are ambiguous, loose, and deceptive. I do not know that the people can
comprehend them. There will be no certainty under them; and they
would, if adopted, result in endless trouble and litigation. I trust
no amendments will ever be made to the Constitution, unless they are
made upon principles of right, justice, and equality, so that there
can be no mistake in construing them hereafter. If we amend the
Constitution, let us do it with a view to the peace of the country,
with a view to the harmony of the country, with a view to the security
of every interest, and of every State in the Union. If we could do
that, and this day amend the Constitution so as to provide expressly
that every State should have equal rights in the Territories and
elsewhere within the Union, this Confederacy would last forever, the
States that have left us would come back, and we should have then a
great and a lasting Union indeed. Without it, we never can have a
permanent Union. We must do something that is clearly right, or the
States that have left us will never return. They never oug