from your own State and from other
States, did not concur in them. I do not impute any bad motive to them.
I am ready to believe they are Americans all. They may not have thought
these laws necessary; or they may have thought that they would be
enacted without their concurrence. Let all that pass away. If they are
now men who will stand by what is done, and stand up for their country,
and say that, as these laws were passed by a majority of the whole
country, we must stand by them and live by them, I will respect them all
as friends.

Now, Gentlemen, allow me to ask of you, What do you think would have
been the condition of the country, at this time, if these laws had not
been passed by the last Congress? if the question of the Texas boundary
had not been settled? if New Mexico and Utah had been left as
desert-places, and no government had been provided for them? And if the
other great object to which State laws had opposed so many obstacles,
the restoration of fugitives, had not been provided for, I ask, what
would have been the state of this country now? You men of Erie County,
you men of New York, I conjure you to go home to-night and meditate on
this subject. What would have been the state of this country, now, at
this moment, if these laws had not been passed? I have given my opinion
that we should have had a civil war. I refer it to you, therefore, for
your consideration; meditate on it; do not be carried away by any
abstract notions or metaphysical ideas; think practically on the great
question, What would have been the condition of the United States at
this moment, if we had not settled these agitating questions? I repeat,
in my opinion, there would have been a civil war.

Gentlemen, will you allow me, for a moment, to advert to myself? I have
been a long time in public life; of course, not many years remain to me.
At the commencement of 1850, I looked anxiously at the condition of the
country, and I thought the inevitable consequence of leaving the
existing controversies unadjusted would be civil war. I saw danger in
leaving Utah and New Mexico without any government, a prey to the power
of Texas. I saw the condition of things arising from the interference of
some of the States in defeating the operation of the Constitution in
respect to the restoration of fugitive slaves. I saw these things, and I
made up my mind to encounter whatever might betide me in the attempt to
avert the impending catastrophe. And allo