o,
the proposition with which I set out, and upon which I intend to stand
or fall; and that is, that the whole territory within the former United
States, or in the newly acquired Mexican provinces, has a fixed and
settled character, now fixed and settled by law which cannot be
repealed,--in the case of Texas without a violation of public faith, and
by no human power in regard to California or New Mexico; that,
therefore, under one or other of these laws, every foot of land in the
States or in the Territories has already received a fixed and decided
character.

Mr. President, in the excited times in which we live, there is found to
exist a state of crimination and recrimination between the North and
South. There are lists of grievances produced by each, and those
grievances, real or supposed, alienate the minds of one portion of the
country from the other, exasperate the feelings, and subdue the sense of
fraternal affection, patriotic love, and mutual regard. I shall bestow a
little attention, Sir, upon these various grievances existing on the one
side and on the other. I begin with complaints of the South. I will not
answer, further than I have, the general statements of the honorable
Senator from South Carolina, that the North has prospered at the expense
of the South in consequence of the manner of administering this
government, in the collecting of its revenues, and so forth. These are
disputed topics, and I have no inclination to enter into them. But I
will allude to other complaints of the South, and especially to one
which has in my opinion just foundation; and that is, that there has
been found at the North, among individuals and among legislators, a
disinclination to perform fully their constitutional duties in regard to
the return of persons bound to service who have escaped into the free
States. In that respect, the South, in my judgment, is right, and the
North is wrong. Every member of every Northern legislature is bound by
oath, like every other officer in the country, to support the
Constitution of the United States; and the article of the
Constitution[16] which says to these States that they shall deliver up
fugitives from service is as binding in honor and conscience as any
other article. No man fulfils his duty in any legislature who sets
himself to find excuses, evasions, escapes from this constitutional
obligation. I have always thought that the Constitution addressed itself
to the legislatures of th