eople upon
your propositions. You even say, you will not acquiesce, if the
decision is adverse. You are in doubt if they will be satisfied if the
decision is in their favor; and some gentlemen frankly avow that these
propositions in themselves are not satisfactory. The gentleman from
Virginia, with an openness and a frankness which seems a part of his
nature, tells us in substance that Virginia will not be satisfied with
these; that Virginia is settled in her determination that slave
property shall be respected; that it has as high a right to protection
as any other property, and in some respects higher; that Virginia will
have these rights acknowledged and secured _under_ the Constitution,
or she will not be satisfied. The statement that she will _not be
satisfied_, has a very peculiar and expressive signification.

Such being our present condition, I have little hope that good can
come of our deliberations. We have started wrong. We should have
settled the questions first, that the Union must be preserved, the
laws enforced, and the duty of every State toward the Union performed,
in every contingency and under all circumstances. Having resolved
this, we could then go on, carefully consider the wants of every
section, and we could afford to be generous in meeting the views of
our Southern friends.

I feel more diffidence than I can well express in being obliged to
differ so widely from the opinions of the gentlemen who have
introduced the proposals contained in the majority report, and who
have advocated them with such signal ability. I have less hesitation
in expressing my unqualified dissent from the representatives of the
free States, who pledge the people of those States so unreservedly to
the support of these propositions, if Congress will submit them to
their constituents. I object to these pledges, because I know they are
deceptive, that they are made without authority, and that they will
never be fulfilled. The South may as well understand this now, as
hereafter.

The Union is precious to the people of the free States. They look upon
it with a feeling closely approaching to reverence. They have looked
upon its dissolution as the greatest national calamity possible. They
have been taught to regard the idea of dissolution as a sin. Now, when
the subject is forced upon their attention, when Conventions are
called throughout the South to discuss it, when in some of the States
the process has already commenced,