ut on invitation addressed the
Convention. The succeeding Legislature instructed me, as a Senator, to
assert this equality, and, under the existing circumstances, to resist
by all constitutional means the admission of California as a State. At a
called session of the Legislature in 1850, a self-constituted committee
called on me, by letter, for my views. They were men who had enacted or
approved the resolutions of the Convention of 1849, and instructed me,
as members of the Legislature, in regular session, in the early part of
the year 1850. To them I replied that I adhered to the policy they had
indicated and instructed me in their official character to pursue.

"I pointed out the mode in which their policy could, in my opinion, be
executed without bloodshed or disastrous convulsion, but in terms of
bitter scorn alluded to such as would insult me with a desire to destroy
the Union, for which my whole life proved me to be a devotee.

"Pardon the egotism, in consideration of the occasion, when I say to you
that my father and my uncles fought through the Revolution of 1776,
giving their youth, their blood, and their little patrimony to the
constitutional freedom which I claim as my inheritance. Three of my
brothers fought in the war of 1812. Two of them were comrades of the
Hero of the Hermitage, and received his commendation for gallantry at
New Orleans. At sixteen years of age I was given to the service of my
country; for twelve years of my life I have borne its arms and served
it, zealously, if not well. As I feel the infirmities, which suffering
more than age has brought upon me, it would be a bitter reflection,
indeed, if I was forced to conclude that my countrymen would hold all
this light when weighed against the empty panegyric which a time-serving
politician can bestow upon the Union, for which he never made a
sacrifice.

"In the Senate I announced that, if any respectable man would call me a
disunionist, I would answer him in monosyllables.... But I have often
asserted the right, for which the battles of the Revolution were
fought--the right of a people to change their government whenever it was
found to be oppressive, and subversive of the objects for which
governments are instituted--and have contended for the independence and
sovereignty of the States, a part of the creed of which Jefferson was
the apostle, Madison the expounder, and Jackson the consistent defender.

"I have written freely, and more than I