ds this bill, even should it become a law of the land, altogether
unusual in the halls of Congress. But I shall not suffer myself to be
excited into warmth by his denunciation of the measure which I support.
Among the feelings which at this moment fill my breast, not the least
is that of regret at the position in which the gentleman has placed
himself. Sir, he does himself no justice. The cause which he has
espoused finds no basis in the Constitution, no succor from public
sympathy, no cheering from a patriotic community. He has no foothold on
which to stand while he might display the powers of his acknowledged
talents. Every thing beneath his feet is hollow and treacherous. He is
like a strong man struggling in a morass: every effort to extricate
himself only sinks him deeper and deeper. And I fear the resemblance may
be carried still farther; I fear that no friend can safely come to his
relief, that no one can approach near enough to hold out a helping hand,
without danger of going down himself, also, into the bottomless depths
of this Serbonian bog.

The honorable gentleman has declared, that on the decision of the
question now in debate may depend the cause of liberty itself. I am of
the same opinion; but then, Sir, the liberty which I think is staked on
the contest is not political liberty, in any general and undefined
character, but our own well-understood and long-enjoyed _American_
liberty.

Sir, I love Liberty no less ardently than the gentleman himself, in
whatever form she may have appeared in the progress of human history. As
exhibited in the master states of antiquity, as breaking out again from
amidst the darkness of the Middle Ages, and beaming on the formation of
new communities in modern Europe, she has, always and everywhere, charms
for me. Yet, Sir, it is our own liberty, guarded by constitutions and
secured by union, it is that liberty which is our paternal inheritance,
it is our established, dear-bought, peculiar American liberty, to which
I am chiefly devoted, and the cause of which I now mean, to the utmost
of my power, to maintain and defend.

Mr. President, if I considered the constitutional question now before us
as doubtful as it is important, and if I supposed that its decision,
either in the Senate or by the country, was likely to be in any degree
influenced by the manner in which I might now discuss it, this would be
to me a moment of deep solicitude. Such a moment has once existed. There