ble complaints as showed
intention and desire to remain unanswered and unsatisfied.. He said
he believed the danger to be that a sectional hostility had been
substituted for the general fraternity, and thus the Government
rendered powerless for the ends for which it was instituted.

The hearts of a portion of the people have been perverted by that
hostility, so that the powers delegated by the compact of union
are regarded not as means to secure the welfare of all, but as
instruments for the destruction of a part--the minority section.
How, then, have we to provide a remedy? By strengthening this
Government? By instituting physical force to overawe the States,
to coerce the people living under them as members of sovereign
communities to pass under the yoke of the Federal Government?...

[Sidenote] "Globe," Dec. 10, 1860, p. 29.

Then where is the remedy, the question may be asked. In the hearts
of the people is the ready reply; and therefore it is that I turn
to the other side of the Chamber, to the majority section, to the
section in which have been committed the acts that now threaten
the dissolution of the Union.... These are offenses such as no
people can bear; and the remedy for these is in the patriotism and
the affection of the people, if it exists; and if it does not
exist, it is far better, instead of attempting to preserve a
forced and therefore fruitless union, that we should peacefully
part, and each pursue his separate course.... States in their
sovereign capacity have now resolved to judge of the infractions
of the Federal compact and of the mode and measure of redress....
I would not give the parchment on which the bill would be written
which is to secure our constitutional rights within the limits of
a State where the people are all opposed to the execution of that
law. It is a truism in free governments that laws rest upon public
opinion, and fall powerless before its determined opposition.

To all that had so far been said, Senator Wade, of Ohio, made, on the
17th day of December, a frank and direct as well as strong and eloquent
reply, which was at once generally accepted by the Republican party of
the Senate and the country as their well-considered and unalterable
position on the crisis. Said he:

I have already said that these gentlemen who make these complaints
have for a long series o