ple,
notwithstanding every assurance we could give you to the contrary,
that we are determined to interfere with your rights? It is thus the
responsibility rests with you.

Although such is my conviction, supported, as I think, by all the
evidence, I am still for peace. Show me now any proposition that will
secure peace, and I will go for it if I can. We came here to take
each other by the hand, to compare views, explain, consult. We meet
you in the most reasonable spirit. Any thing that honorable men _may_
do, we _will_ do.

We will go back to 1845 when you admitted Texas; back to the Missouri
Compromise of 1820. You certainly can complain of nothing previous to
that time. If, since then, there has been any law of Congress passed
which is unjust toward you, which infringes upon your rights, which
operates unfairly upon your interests, we will join you in securing
its repeal. We will go farther. If you will point out any act of the
Republican Party which has given you just cause for apprehension, we
will give you all security against it. We will do any thing but amend
the fundamental law of Government. Before we do that we must be
convinced of its necessity.

When you propose essential changes in the Constitution you must expect
that they will be subjected to a critical examination; if not here,
certainly elsewhere. I object to those proposed by the majority of the
committee--

1st. For what they _do_ contain.

2nd. For what they _do not_ contain.

I do not propose to criticize the language used in your propositions
of amendment. That would be trifling. I think the language very
infelicitous, and if I supposed those propositions were to become part
of the Constitution, I should think many verbal changes indispensable.
But I pass by all that, and come at once to the substance.

I object to the propositions, sir, because they would put into the
Constitution new expressions relating to slavery, which were
sedulously kept out of it by the framers of that instrument; left out
of it, not accidentally, but because, as MADISON said, they did not
wish posterity to know from the Constitution that the institution
existed.

But I object further, because the propositions contain guarantees for
slavery which our fathers did not and would not give. In 1787 the
convention was held at Philadelphia to establish our form of
Government. WASHINGTON was its presiding officer, whose name was in
itself a bond of union. It was soon